


Thomas the Mariner

by shirogiku



Series: Give Him A Blanket [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: 18th Century Nerdery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humour, Blankets For All, Classical References, Drowning, Eventual Happy Ending, Father-Son Issues, Fix-It, Gen, Hallucinations, Henry Avery - Freeform, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pigs, Pre-Series, Reunions, Sea Voyages, The Blanket Is Totally A Character, The Royal Navy, The Wrong Indies, Thomas Hamilton Memorial Week, Thomas Never Changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas's voyage home takes slightly less than ten years, but not for the lack of misadventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wrong Indies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shaitanah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/gifts).



> Hey, so this is it, this is Thomas and his Blanket vs. sea voyages :)

                                                                                      “ _Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep, even so I will endure…_

_For already have I suffered full much, and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war._

_Let this be added to the tale of those._ ”

 _—_ Homer _, The Odyssey (George Chapman translation)_

 

* * *

 

**_Thirteen years ago_ **

“So, he returns to the land of the living at last.” If anything more was said, it was drowned out by the sea.

Standing on the quarterdeck, high over the others, Father dwarfed even Camell, the captain, his indomitable will all but steering the ship. He owned shares in this vessel _and_ the territories which she was bound for. Indeed, if Man could own the Ocean in its entirety, he would no doubt add that title to his name.

Thomas smiled weakly. “I never left the company of the living, sir, for I am yet to meet my Euridice.” Please let those words _not_ give his father an idea for another lecture on the importance of matrimony and family continuation - it was much too early in the morning and much too late in the voyage for such trials.

Father snorted. “The medico tells me you have no stomach for sea voyages. You had better find it, or you’ll be no use to me in managing my colonial affairs.”

The last three days had been long ones, to be sure. “Pray give me a chance, sir. I was told it could take some time to acquire.”

The Earl, naturally, hadn’t had a moment of sea sickness in his life, or so he would have you believe. A Grand Tour this was not - it felt more like a punishment from the Almighty for all those merry frolics in Eton.

“That miserable little dunghill is worse than a regiment of your wooden horses, boy. If it ever actually starts returning profit, I’ll eat old Rowley’s hat.”

“But sir! Surely we have loaded some provisions that are easier to chew through?” A hat couldn’t be good for the teeth.

Father did not like it when he was trying to be funny. Not a bit.

The previous Earl, Thomas’s grandfather (for all that Thomas kept feeling like a foundling), had been granted ‘Bahama, Eleuthera, Abaco, Providence, Inagua and all other islands lying within twenty-two to twenty-seven degrees north latitude’ plus the right to ‘whales, sturgeons and all other royal fishes in the sea, bays, inlets and rivers’ as one of the eight Carolina Proprietors, to resolve the previous state of confusion. The Big Eight, in their turn, had the power to make grants of land, levy customs’ fee and appoint governors. According to the medieval custom, a rent of one pound of fine silver was to be paid as often as the Royal Family visited the islands. But they never did visit, taking little interest, and the Lords Proprietor followed their example.

All of the Lords Proprietor but Earl Ashbourne, who was a born Inspector and Overseer. Four years ago, a man called Cadwallader Jones had been sent to those islands with exactly four barrels of powder to support his regime. Unsurprisingly, he opted for upholding the fine tradition of losing the bottom of his pockets and allying himself with the local pirates. Now, after two arrests and imprisonments by the law-abiding denizens, their Lordships had commissioned a replacement.

At which point, Earl Ashbourne had decided to take a detour en route to the Carolinas, and see to it that the call of duty proved to be stronger than any (reasonable) temptation to turn back on arrival.

“A barrel for a year,” Thomas mused. “Tell me how many barrels the new governor has packed, and I will tell you how long he will remain in office.”

“Don’t give me that cheek, Thomas! You mistake your Greeks and Romans for real knowledge of the world.” In that case, why educate him at all, if it was all to be so readily dismissed? “Until you have something worthwhile to say, you will bloody well keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”

Thomas peered at the pitiless, unbroken expanse stretching from horizon to horizon, without a hint of land. It had looked so much livelier on the maps, so full of adventure and mystery. He was beginning to understand how come the Earl was so in his element here.

 

* * *

 

_**Now** _

People can change, or at least fail to avoid the change thrust upon them. But the Ocean, it remains the same, cruel without care or intent. It was a folly to ascribe it a will that it did not possess, but Thomas could no more help the unwelcome associations than he could help being so under the weather.

“Incidentally, Governor Trott let Cadwallader Jones go without a trial,” he was saying. “And in the end, the cure was worse than the disease: he was very man who consorted with Avery. It’s a curious thing, how history goes round in circles, is it not?” History, and the two unhappy minds sharing the Blanket.

Ever since the ship began to sail, Thomas the Dissenter and Thomas the Fiddler had been thoroughly and masterfully seasick - it was like their stomachs had been _competing_ with each other, their mad race leaving little room for real sleep. Thomas had but one question to ask himself: what the _bedlam_ had he been thinking?

In an ideal world, his passage to New Providence would have needed all of, well, one passage in a book, two tops _._

“How was your voyage, darling?” Miranda would ask.

“Very well, thank you, dearest.” To James, he might add: “Like an extended medicinal purging, but with a blanket. Ha. Ha.”

This was not an ideal world, nor was it that kind of book. Lady Ramsden’s remaining friends had been oddly sympathetic to the plight of a Lunatick trio who had taken their discharge into their own hands. But a month in the countryside had been all the wait that Thomas could bear, declaring himself fit enough to brave one final challenge. And so followed the voluntary commitment into the damp realm ‘tween decks. Their miserable little berth was screened off with canvas - so much for privacy - and scarcely furnished, the steep fee having eaten up most of their money.

“France, definitely France,” had been Elizabeth’s much better plan. “But _do_ write to me as soon as you can. Tibby is a dear, and she will forward all your letters, Thomas.”

The first time that the surgeon’s mate tried to give Thomas some food, he had kicked the poor man in the teeth, and he was still deeply ashamed of himself (also, wondering how on earth he had managed such a feat).

“Sir Thomas Cavendish, have you ever heard of him?”

The Fiddler made a sound of negation.

It was a new game: name as many seafaring Thomases as you can. It soothed Thomas, and he hoped against hope to outdo Bedlam’s headcount.

“Also known as ‘the Navigator’ - he was the first to emulate Sir Drake’s exploits. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth on his return.” Unfortunately, the second time around, he hadn’t been so lucky: he had died at sea at the age of thirty-one. “Well. At least we have outlived him somewhat.” He paused. “Haven’t we? How old _are_ you?”

The Fiddler held out both of his hands thrice, and then his index finger once.

“Oh. Um.” Moving on. “Thomas Tew, the pirate? He was never captured, you know. They say he founded a pirate kingdom on Madagascar _and_ he had a very intimate relationship with his closest ally and fellow pirate Captain Want. No, really, that’s not a quote from a lewd novel I’ve been writing!”

The Fiddler snorted, his bony elbow bumping into Thomas’s equally bony side on the ship’s next roll.

“Right.” Thomas wondered what James would call himself. Something short and striking, like the striking of a flame.

(Which just went to show how much Thomas knew about colonial tinder-boxes.)

He didn’t mind his conversations with the Fiddler being so one-sided: when his friend was ready, he would engage with the world in full. His presence in itself was a great support, even if a small part of Thomas did envy him his extra screen. At any rate, neither of them had lost his sense of smell.

_But, Thomas, if you did, how would you smell all the flowers of the New World?_

The itinerary was really quite simple, on paper: Barbados-Bermuda-Eleuthera or Harbour Island via a trading sloop, or directly to Nassau if possible. In less than three months, the weather permitting, he would be there. He had already waited much, much longer.

“Thomas the Mariner,” said the musician, so quietly that Thomas might have imagined it.

“Oh?” he asked, excited. The Fiddler had started speaking back in the country, but his words were still few and far in between. “Who is that?”

“You.”

One of the ship’s boys, a short little fellow with pockmarked face and a perpetually tousled straw-blond head, edged in to inform them that the Captain had invited them to dinner.

Thomas smiled. “Thank you, Finney, we shall be there without delay.”

The little fellow froze. “How do you know me name, sir?”

He blinked. “Shouldn’t I?” He reached into his pocket and then, to his dismay, remembered that he could not afford to give the tip.

The lad scowled before dashing off with a none too flattering mutter.

He suppressed a sigh, poking around as if a coin might materialise by magic. “Dining with the Captain is a great privilege, from what I understand.” They ought to look their best - two convalescing gentlemen who were down on their luck, _not_ madhouse escapees.

His trials had taken their toll, and his hair had paid a lion’s share of it, while the Fiddler’s brown curls were by no means beyond rescue. Neither of them could be trusted with a razor, so their preparations chiefly consisted of finding someone better equipped for the job.

Supporting each other, they crept up the ladder and towards the only marginally comfortable space aboard.

The great cabin lived up to its name: painted pea-green with splashes of gold, it had both windows and skylights to make it light and airy. There were no bookshelves, but it was generally neat and fitted up with mahogany.

“Thomas South?” the Fiddler whispered.

“The first name in the game.”

Captain South, in short, was an organic part of his suite and a picture of a world of privilege. Not that Thomas _missed_ such things terribly, but he had to admit, a Diogenes he was not.

The only other passengers were the Leighs, the husband and wife around Thomas’s age and their two daughters just old enough for a governess, which they did not have. Mrs. Leigh’s maid, Jane, gave Thomas a surreptitious wink, in honour of the adventure with the razor. She had told him that she had three younger brothers; he only hoped that her steady hand wouldn’t get her in trouble with her mistress.

The girls - Ginny and Annabel - hadn’t been raised to be neither seen nor heard. After the first civilities, Thomas was happy to listen to their lively chatter.

“Mama? Mama! Do they _really_ have tigers walking the streets?”

“No, you silly,” her sister argued. “Tigers live in the forest, so if you want to hunt them, you need a battle horse and a spear _this_ long. Or a sword!”

“But Mama! You promised me tigers and princesses and many beautiful things!”

This was a very peculiar view of Barbados.

“And you, Mr. Greene?” Mrs. Leigh asked, smiling at him charmingly, with dimples in her cheeks. She did not have the complexion of a high society lady, but Thomas had never understood the obsession. “We haven’t heard from you yet. Are you looking for a princess or a tiger?”

He mirrored the smile. “I am travelling to rejoin my wife and our friends,” the plural would always sound more respectable, ”after some trouble with my health. Before, my constitution wouldn’t allow me to make the journey, and she had to sail ahead without me.”

Mrs. Leigh nodded in sympathy. “Is she in Bombay now? There is some society there, though of course nothing can make up for such a separation.” She carried on talking, of her husband’s work as the East India Company’s factor and her own hopes and plans for India.

Since Christmas, 1705, Thomas had many an occasion to doubt his sanity before anyone else’s. He had grown intimately familiar with the disconnect between what he thought he should be hearing and what other people were actually telling him. He stood up abruptly, his chair screeching backward against the floorboards.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I am unwell again.” He staggered outside.

The striped ensign, jack and pendants. The gunports - no average West Indiaman could afford such heavy armaments, as James would have noticed at first sight. All of England’s finery and brutality put on display in one.

Her name was the _James_ , despite the unfortunate implications in this day and age. _I have a good feeling about this voyage_ , he remembered himself saying as his knees folded under him. He had seen it as a _sign_ from above, the bloody fool.

Mr. Rule, the surgeon, and a highly unpleasant man at that, came and went, reporting a state of nervous agitation. Thomas grew aware of the Fiddler holding out an apple to him, his blanket already thrown over him.

“Did you know?” Thomas whispered. “Did you _know_ this was the wrong ship?” The blank look on the Fiddler’s face made him regret his tone immediately. The sailors were watching them from the rigging - a free spectacle. “We can fix this! It can’t be too late to change ships!”

In theory, it might not be, but it called for a captain willing to make allowances for a sick man. Captain South wasn’t the sort, and for all Thomas’s dealings with seamen, never had he heard such vehemence about a wind.

Six months… one way, with all the risks that came with rounding the Cape of Good Hope, among other things. It would be over a year before the _James_ was back to England. James and Miranda would not learn of his escape from _him_ \- they could _perish_ in that time!

The word of his confusion spread, turning it into the ship’s new favourite anecdote. The Englishman who sailed to the wrong Indies to find his wife. Perhaps he should just settled for the wrong wife, too.

And so began his strange odyssey.

“Where are we?” he would ask every morning. Perhaps they had never left, and this was more of Bethlem’s finest.

“The sea,” the musician would reply faithfully. Or: “The _James_.”

Curiously enough, it was also Mrs. Leigh who took pity on him: “Dear sir, you don’t have to go all the way to Mocha and back! There will be a stopover at the Cape, or perhaps even sooner. You need only to be more careful in the future.”

He lowered his head. “I haven’t the means, I’m afraid.” Her maid must have told her that he and his friend didn’t even have a swinging cot between them - not that anything untoward had happened. “And I doubt anyone would employ me.”

“Then perhaps you should continue with us to Bombay. And draw on your friends or bankers from there?” A long silence, for Thomas to squirm inwardly. His principles were that much harder to apply to his own beggarhood. “Have you any Latin or French, Mr. Greene? What about Math?”

If you asked Mr. Leigh, _Latin_ was a stretch, but it soon became clear who was the leader of their little itinerant household. The girls, on the surface so reminiscent of Little Abigail, wanted nothing to do with any sort of learning and would sit still for no lesson. They were a constant, never-ending trial of Thomas’s patience - and he loved them for it. One day, he might even be able to laugh at his mistake.

The _James_ remained a remarkably healthy ship all the way to the Cape, celebrating Christmas with some extra rum and singing and little ceremony otherwise. Thomas watched the dancers, longing to join them. For a moment, he thought he saw his James and Miranda, linking hands and beckoning him. He blinked, and the image was gone.

He was none the wiser as to why the ship sailed by herself - it must be her solitary personality, he decided. Unflinchingly, she did not veer away from her planned route and schedule. But the crossing itself pushed her timbers and crew to their limits. The year had turned, but when Thomas finally made his landfall on the beach, he was swept up by a wild, dizzying euphoria… followed, he was sorry to say, by a dead faint.

Escaping the quarrelsome surgeon, he accompanied Mrs. Leigh on her shopping expedition into the Dutch-Huguenot settlement, for cheaper foodstuffs.

“You should be our ship’s lieutenant,” he joked, observing her no mean progress. “Or is it the first mate in the merchant fleet?”

“Lord, no!” She laughed. “Why would you wish that on anybody?”

“A fair point.”

They moored off the Cape for weeks, with little to do but explore and recover and chase after two of the world’s most reluctant pupils. Thomas oscillated between impatience and curiosity, lethargy and a frantic need to be doing something. He picked up his quill, meaning to fill his journal with something more coherent than sparse, mechanical notes. He owed his loves ones a dozen letters. But while the ink on the tip was fresh, his inner inkwell seemed to have run dry.

The first day of the next leg of the voyage was marked by Thomas’s first whale: a distant fountain on its way between the enchanted palaces of the Arab romances.

 

* * *

 

“Last century, some parts of the Gambia had been under the independent rule of Prince Jacob Kettler, of Courland. He was a great coloniser and a friend of the people.” Though perhaps not the people of Gambia. “Do you know where Courland is? Ginny? Annie?”

Annabel pointed excitedly. “I know where the pirates are! Look! Look!”

Five sails, God knew what colours. “Oh, no, they must be a group of merchantmen.” He paused as he noticed the commotion around them that seemed altogether excessive for a friendly exchange of news.

Thomas did not see any of the gallant engagement, as they were ushered down into the dank orlop space. If he had got that word right.

“Oh James,” he sighed, “I liked your...” frigate? No, frigates were the smaller ones. “... ship so much better.”

“The Captain won’t yield without a struggle,” said Mrs. Leigh, in what was probably intended as a soothing tone. Her husband, who had done military service, had taken up arms on deck, much to his girls’ admiration.

“Is that wise?” Thomas wondered. “Against _five_ opponents?”

“Of course it is wise! The man knows his business.”

A small, treacherous part of Thomas kept murmuring to him about Mr. Rule’s laudanum.

“Thomas!” he practically heard Miranda yell in his ear. “Who was it that always said, invite a good excuse, pave the way for the bad ones?”

It was I, he agreed dejectedly.

The chase dragged on and on, followed by explosive cheers and deafening cannon-fire. Later, Thomas would hear all about the expert gunnery, the repelled boarding attempts, and the crew’s wonderful spirit - they had lost but two men, with nine wounded. Philip Leigh showed no disdain for Thomas’s feeble-bodied pacifism. But those five hours lasted five years.

“You see?” Hortensia gestured expansively around, taking in the harbour. “We’re almost there!” And the girls could have their tigers.

The city of Bombay sat on as many islets as Rome had hills. It was a conjuring act, bringing up land from the sea. It assaulted Thomas with new colours and smells and impressions. He dressed lightly and planted mangoes and explored crumbling Jesuit churches and Dominican convents. He learnt to play Carrom, a board game of the Maharajas, mixing chess with about four more sets of rules. Months had passed before the Leighs put him and his friend aboard the _Tiger_ (yes), a merchant vessel commanded by Philip’s cousin. Jane gave Thomas a Good Razor, crying noisily into her handkerchief. The girls were sorrier to bid him an exciting voyage than his Latin, it must be noted.

“Here,” said Mrs. Leigh, holding out some mango seeds. “Plant them in your Indies.”

He swallowed hard before he could reply: “Thank you. Both of you. For everything!”

Mrs. Leigh smiled. “Do try and write to us, dear heart!”

He promised to dictate the letters to the mango trees.


	2. The Pig Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and his sanity finally have their divorce.

* * *

 

Seawater is a Good Cure for Melancholy - it certainly doesn’t go down one’s throat easily. Especially in unlimited doses.

 _I’m so sorry, James_ , Thomas thought helplessly. _I can’t swim like you._ The sea was dragging at his mind, his soul and his body, dragging him back into the dark, and he couldn’t feel his limbs properly, nor hear his heart - there was just the acrid burn in his mouth. _I do believe this is the end of my miserable little odyssey._ No man could be expected to be dashed against the rocks over and over again, and fight to keep one’s head above water forever.

James’s face was haloed by a stream of sunlight, his hair burnished copper and gold. “You’re still breathing!” he said or commanded, pushing down hard on Thomas’s chest and pressing him into the wet sand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas caught a small, blurry shape, moving on the canvas of radiant blue. Then he felt a yank on his leg, then another, followed by the breeze brushing against his bare toes. The back of Musa, one of the ship’s Lascar boys, was making off with his boots.

* * *

 

_**October (November) 1709** _

 

A rich, powerful bass-baritone sang:

 _From Boston harbor we set sail_  
_And the wind was blowin' the devil of a gale_  
_With the ring-tail set all about the mizzen peak_  
_And the dolphin striker plowin' up the deep_  
  
_With a big bow wow, tow row row_ _  
_ Fal dee rall dee di do day.

A somewhat less operatic but no less enthusiastic voice joined in:

 _With a big bow wow, tow row row_ _  
_ _Fal dee rall dee di do day._

_“Old McGraw,” the captain said,_

_“would you like to make a seaman_

_out of your grandson, Jim?_

_With a deep blue coat and a big damned hat,_

_Old McGraw, wouldn't you like that?”_

“ _The song goes on and on and on, with a big bow wow, big bow wow._ ” Thomas hiccuped. “ _I don’t remember where it goes, but someone loses a leg.”_

His drinking mate continued:

 _With a big bow wow, tow row row_ _  
_ _Fal dee rall dee di do day!_

“ _A big bow wow, tow row row,_ ” Thomas agreed. _“And I raise this toast to a drunken ghost!”_

Henry Avery looked nothing like those London pamphlet-printers would have you believe. He had a pleasant, open face and almost all his teeth; at sea, you do _not_ have good hair days either, but his thick chestnut curls and beard were in a positively _fantastic_ condition. It had been ages since the _Tiger_ was wrecked off the coast of Madagascar, their raft having washed up on St. Mary’s, but Thomas was yet to discover the secret behind that glorious beard. That is, apart from being a ghost, which wasn’t secret at all. The local oils, herbs and remedies simply left Thomas smelling like a nicer druggist’s shop.

He tried not to dwell on the fate of the _Tiger_ ’s captain and the others who had not made it.

James was, of course, glaring at him, as was James’s custom and full prerogative these days.

“Not to worry, my love,” Thomas told him. “I still adore _your_ hair above all.” He paused. “Miranda’s hair is Miranda’s. In a league of its own. I should probably stop thinking about hair so much, shouldn’t I?”

The Glare grew to its capital letter. “Thomas Hamilton, a noble soul, a true gentleman and a Renaissance man, died an addle-brained alcoholic on bloody Madagascar! Is this _truly_ how you want your story to end?”

His story had ended with a forced discharge from Bedlam and a promise of a happy reunion with his two loves. _This_ was some sad hack’s attempt at ruining it, like those awful and awfully liberal English translations of continental novels. Therefore, it was all completely untrue.

“Leave me alone,” he muttered, peeved. The Glare refused to budge. “ _Why_ did you pull me out of the water?”

“I liked your coat!” Avery admitted, after a loud belch. “Alas, it did not fit me in the shoulders. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me now, but I used to have such a _fine_ wardrobe. The best tailor in Boston, I had!”

James quirked his eyebrows at that. “Your standards of friendship have never been higher, Thomas.”

“Oh, shush, you! Why didn’t _you_ break me out of that place?” Thomas was getting more and more fired up. “Did no one ever tell you, there’s a difference between taking care of each other and actually abandoning the least well-adjusted member of your trio! Peter told me you didn’t even _try_ to formulate a plan!”

Bloody Peter. If they ever met again, he would...! Do! Things!

James squatted down in front of Thomas, the firelight and its host of shadows sliding over him like living tattoos. “And you still believe everything Peter used to tell you?”

“You didn’t come!” Thomas shouted. “I waited and waited and waited and _you didn’t come_! I’m utterly useless at this whole survival business, can’t you see that! I can’t even get from Point A to Point B without mixing up the ships and then getting shipwrecked!”

James’s expression hardened. “You just can’t see it, can you? Your way off this fucking island is right beside you, and you can’t fucking see it because you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself! That’s not the Thomas Hamilton I used to know.”

Yes, well, _that_ Thomas Hamilton had been chained to a wall for trying to punch his father for calling James a...! Never mind. “You think I haven’t _tried_ ?” The only ones who dropped anchor here willingly were _slavers_ , and he couldn’t deal with them. He simply couldn’t.

James shook his head at him.

In the morning, he was woken up by a gaggle of children tripping over his outstretched legs. He groaned, curling up on his side and crawling deeper into the shade. His mouth was full of sand.

“Did I start raving again?” he asked in a small voice.

“Uh-huh.”

“Did I call you Avery again?”

Captain Glorious Beard shrugged, peering into his empty bottle as if it were a spyglass. “You know I always take it as a compliment.”

Before Thomas could ask after the next item on the list, Mama Corra appeared on the porch, wrapped in her blanket-sized lamba, the traditional clothing of her people. Hers was a two-piece set - one around the generous chest and the other around the shoulders - striped red, white and black and emphasising her powerful frame. Ombanne Corra’s age was impossible to tell - her face was deeply lined, but her hair was as silky and smooth as a young girl’s, and without a single white strand. She was the proud tyrant of her own house-fortress, encircled with a high wooden wall and a sizeable ditch, the perimeter booby-trapped. Paths to and from her compound were more confusing and convoluted than any philosophical argument - Thomas could just get to the beach, but he wouldn’t risk visiting the neighbours without a guide, for more reasons than one. He, the Fiddler and the fake Avery’s ghost were generally considered to be spoils of salvage - somewhere between decorative dogs and a useful acquisition. Thomas taught English, French, Spanish and what he had of Dutch to the matriarch’s many children and grandchildren, so long as nobody asked him to interpret for a slaving transaction or visit the local kings.

She said nothing to Thomas, her silence being more eloquent than any verbal reproach. As to the pirate captain, she snapped at him: “Who nurse you back to health when horrible fever?”

“You did, Mama Corra,” he replied sheepishly.

“Who always say you drink like a pig?”

She had a fine herd of pigs, originally bartered from a passing Dutchman, and now terrorising the local wild hogs.

“You do, Mama Corra.”

“And you ever stop? No! Next time, I make pork stew!”

This scene had been repeating itself with a depressing regularity. After forcing down his breakfast, Thomas dragged his feet over to what he thought of as his bathing spot.

“There is room for some proprietary feeling even in the humblest of hearts.” Humble or humbled.

James did not wait to reappear, perched on a rock in his white shirt and breeches - to remind Thomas of all those fleeting moments between them. Miranda, he missed with his whole heart; but James, he was shipwrecked without. He paused at the water’s edge, eyeing the surf mistrustfully. It was so strong in the rainy season, though blissfully warm.

“Another day in paradise,” his love commented sarcastically. “How is it wallowing? Have you got started on a new raft yet? Make rafts, not drafts.”

“You never used to take that tone with me,” Thomas complained. “What are you, the Spirit of Sobriety too now?”

The truth was, he didn’t stand much of a chance at alcoholism - before the bottle was finished, he either talked himself into passing out or lapsed into a silent, gloomy and dry paranoid spell.

“ _You_ never used to be a quitter.”

Thomas glared at him. “I _was_ ready to quit! And what did you do? You told me ‘the Navy hasn’t made its case yet’!”

“You never used to be so unfair either.”

Having had his quick dip, Thomas went over to James, chasing after the phantom warmth of his non-presence. As he looked into James’s eyes, the sea looked back at him, vast and indifferent.

“Tell me what to do,” he implored. “Please, I beg of you!” Or he would be left marooned and talking to nothing _but_ his inner ghosts and demons until the island claimed his remains.

Such a beautiful sea, those eyes. “Very well.” James pushed himself off to walk along the shore. “Let us go over what you have at your disposal at this stage, shall we? Item one, a captain.”

Thomas frowned. “Who, _Halsey_? You have got to be joking!”

“He is the very same man who has faced a British squadron of five ships, with over sixty guns between them - and instead of fleeing, he carried off _two_ of them as his prizes. Fifty thousand pounds, Thomas!”

“He told me he _gave the wrong orders_ , and then it was too late. And what does it matter now, anyway? He has lost it all to the sea.” Thomas and his newest friend were really worth each other.

“Item two, a ship.”

“What, that wretched thing?” He was referring to the most recent wreck, which the islanders had not yet started picking clean.  “It will _never_ survive the Cape, James!”

“Item three, pirates enough to knock together a semblance of a crew.”

Oh yes, so many to choose from. Piracy was a young man’s business - these were more in the lines of scavenging and sunning themselves. Nothing wrong with that, provided you were in no hurry to cross the Atlantic.

A mythical kingdom of endless freedom indeed, and Thomas knew not what to do with so much, on his own.

“What kind of madman would attempt the voyage?”

James smiled and kissed his forehead. “A madman who hopes and dreams. Find out what your bearded Boston mate has left behind, and you’ll have your answer.” With that, he let Thomas stare at the sea to his heart’s content.

Halsey’s usual frame of mind fluctuated between, ‘I just wanted a new letter of marque!’ and ‘God damn these hurricanes!’ But not once had he spoken of his family or seeing Boston again.

“If a Navy ship should come here one day, offering pardons,” Thomas said later, watching Halsey cut up a watermelon, slowly and methodically; six more pairs of eyes were trained on it impatiently, but a fair split was a fair split. “Would you take it?” It was one of those fantasies that his James the Commenter liked to mock.

Halsey paused. “Nah, haven’t got the gold anymore.” He let out a forlorn sigh, like he had lost a sweetheart.

Thomas blinked. “Pray, what does it have to do with gold?”

Halsey looked up. “Why, everything! When they want to pardon you, you know what that means? They know you’re in coin and they want it.”

“ _No_ ,” was Thomas’s knee-jerk reaction. “No-no, it’s not always like that!”

“‘course it is,” Halsey said matter-of-factly. “Watermelons are green, but red on the inside, and it’s only stealing when you steal for yourself. If they give you a scrap of paper, it’s alright, then, ‘cause it’s for _them_ now.” He got his finger in the air as if to test the wind. “‘cause the only real crime as far as _they’re_ concerned is not having their permission. Watermelon cut!” The children descended upon it like a little swarm - blink, and it was all gone.

Thomas went away to meditate upon Halsey’s words.

“There _are_ real crimes in the world,” he argued the next morning, when the fishermen were coming back with their catch. “Lies, betrayal, slavery, wrongful imprisonment, rape, murder. Taking a life or one’s liberty away is _always_ a crime.”

“Even if it’s to stop a greater crime?” James asked.

“Oh, you can fight fire with fire alright. It doesn’t make it less inherently wrong, though.”

“Even if it’s to avenge the wrongs done to you and the people you love?”

Thomas swung on his heel. “The world is _full_ of wrongs, James!”

“I’ll just be over there,” Halsey said peacefully, edging away.

“How do you find the golden middle?” Thomas went on. “How do you learn to make those wrongs fewer and not multiply them with your actions _and_ inaction?” He used to be so certain of his ideas, and look where they had got him!

James looked at him. “You could start with asking me those questions in person. Just a thought.”

One answer came to Thomas while he was painting a gourd - a rare privilege - and listening to the familiar fiddle outside.

“What he has left behind!” He dropped the sponge. “Oh dear, I _have_ been a fool!”

He jumped to his feet and raced over to the pirate captain, who was plaiting a little girl’s hair in another hut. He happened to be an expert plaiter.

“You can be captain again!” Thomas cried. For the first time in their strange acquaintance, Halsey seemed vaguely worried. “With your own ship and crew and everything!” The only problem was how to rescue her while she was still in one piece.

Halsey finished the braid, tucked a flower behind the little girl’s ear and sent her running along. Crazy talk, especially of piracy, phased or excited nobody around here. Having heard Thomas’s plan, he pressed his finger to his lips and began to sneak.

“My pig bank,” Halsey announced proudly as their reached their destination. “Mama Corra will _never_ find it here.”

Thomas considered the pigs. The pigs considered him. “I’ll be the lookout.”

Halsey’s treasure had been buried under the straw and the muck. The solitary chest’s contents… did not amaze Thomas, but he put his best face on it.

“So!” Halsey clapped him on the back with a muddy hand. “If you can tell me what all these beauties are worth and if they can buy us a ship, you shall be my new purser!”

Thomas… had not seen that one coming. In his experience, acquired back in Bombay, they could be Pounds sterling, Pagodas, Rupees, Fanams, Xeraphims, Laris, Juttals, Matte, Reis, Rials, Cruzadoes, Sequins, Pice, Budgerook - a macabre chant in its own right - or Dollars of different values, with the exchange rate from one currency to another being about as stable as the favourable winds in the monsoon season.

“Give me a couple of hours,” he said in resignation.

The word was, Ombanne Corra’s pigs were no pigs at all, but white men who had incurred her displeasure. She sniffed at the treasure chest.

“Money doesn’t smell,” Thomas misquoted helpfully.

“This here smell a _lot_ , I tell you.”

“You could buy a lot of powder.” Her haggling methods considered.

She remained unconvinced. “John say it all sink!”

He gave the chest a slight nudge with his bare foot. He really did need new boots. “John likes poetic exaggeration.”

She seemed to reach a decision - after all, money was money and powder was power - and shouted for one of her daughters to count it again. If Thomas had made any significant errors, it was quite impossible to tell.

Thomas and Halsey were in a perfect accord when it came to recruiting the crew: each of them thought that the other was best equipped to do it.

“I can’t recruit _anyone_ without a fine coat,” Halsey bemoaned. “They won’t take me seriously!”

“Well, _I_ can’t recruit anyone without a good head of hair or a wig, a fine coat, a reliable pair of boots and my wife’s helpful advice.”

Halsey gave him a sympathetic look. “D’you think we could borrow her magic lamba?”

The Lamba and the Blanket were from the same family, as Thomas had discovered early on, but Mama Corra would sooner turn them into pigs.

“This here my worst daughter.” Ombanne Corra pushed forward a tall, brawny, sullen young woman, the sea shells woven into her plaits tinkling. “You borrow her, she look after you. If _you_ no look after her, John, my curses find you _anywhere_.”

“Ivola,” the young woman declared, throwing back her head in defiance. Her name, not a curse.

“She means you, by the way,” Halsey mouthed to Thomas.

“Doesn’t she remember my name?”

“She thinks _every_ Englishman is named John, so ‘Thomas’ must be your family name.”

“Oh dear.” He met Mama Corra’s stern gaze. “What exactly do you mean by ‘look after us’?”

Ivola’s recruiting methods could be summed up as: A Very Large Stick. It was surprisingly effective, and impossible to argue with.

While Thomas had been too busy lamenting his fate, the Fiddler had gone native enough to share a hut with a rakish-looking male Malagasy man. Of the male persuasion.

Perhaps Thomas had been too hard on this place, after all.

“But… I’ve always thought you would meet James and Miranda…” He faltered. “But I will also understand if you don’t wish to sail a leaky raft across the seas!”

The Fiddler wrinkled his sunburnt nose, adjusting his kerchief. “Thomas the Mariner resumes his voyage?”

“You _are_ older than thirty-one now, though.”

The Fiddler smiled. “I will play for you one more time.”

As the Fiddler played, he planted a mango tree by the watermelons, the seeds having survived in his inner coat pocket - a mango tree for the island to remember him. Instead of a life taken, a life given root.

Ivola and the Stick were already aboard when he climbed up - on his own, _mostly_ \- and the full meaning of Mama Corra’s words finally caught up with him.

“No, no, no!” he cried to Halsey. “We must not take the risk! Knowing our bad luck, sailing with us is worse than any curse!”

A deafening silence crept up on him, punctuated only by a few coughs on deck.

Ivola marched up to him. “You have a problem me sailing with you?”

There was no good way to answer that, was there? Carefully, he took his much-worn Blanket out of his sack. “What shall we call our ship?”

People went insane living like this, in cramped quarters, with no real privacy, no sanitation, scarcely any space to think, and, after a while, no proper food. The same monotony for months to no end. The difference was, this floating asylum was a democracy, at least if you had voted for Ivola’s stick.

As they sailed, or rather, let the sea carry the _Happy Pigs_ (voted by majority, mind you) along while desperately trying to seem like they knew what they were doing - so, just a normal cruise, then, said James - they accidentally found out _fifteen_ more women in their ranks, in various states of disguise and from Malagasy to Dutch. Ivola was _not_ happy with them: they all must be here to steal her job. Skyla, the Dutch girl, was already sowing dissent and saying that a quartermaster was supposed to speak _for_ the crew, not shout at them about her mother whenever the mast made a suspicious noise.

“Ah, this is the life,” said Halsey, posing on the quarterdeck and biting into his watermelon slice. On the bright side, scurvy would not be a problem for a while. ”What say you, Mr. Greene?”

“Your new coat is very fine.” Thomas pulled the Blanket tighter around himself. At night, he could still hear the song of the fiddle in his ears. “You should be a tailor yourself.” As to Thomas’s sea stomach, it was proving to be more elusive than any Bahamas - those, at least, could be found on the right sort of maps. “And I am still oh so very green.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shanties are _Boston Harbour_ and a loose _Mrs. McGraw_ rendition, the latter of which doesn't even exist yet (?).
> 
> Halsey is based on a real pirate who died on Madagascar in 1708, but also on a couple of other comical pirate characters bc if the show can do this kind of stuff, why can't I? :D 
> 
> Mama Corra is a nod to Homer's Circe. Her and Ivola's names are, I'm sorry to say, from a list of slave names recorded by the Dutch bc that's the only historical source I could find :(


	3. A Pirate Called Good Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is only one she-pirate in the West Indies. Georg Thomas is an outlier and must not be counted.

                                                           “ _Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look._ ”

                                                           — Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_

 

 _Seawater is the Wrong Sort of Water,_ the paper read fuzzily. _It steals life instead of giving it. Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. Animum debes mutare, non caelum. Change not the sky but your state of mind. Change not the sea, but with the sea._

The words blurred, and Thomas sucked on his quill’s tip absent-mindedly, staring at the writing. Was that his hand? Had he really just filled three pages with nothing but seawater-related nonsense?

“Thomas, _no_.” James wrenched the inkpot away from him. “You must _not_ drink from that!”

“Why not?” Was it the wrong sort of water, too? Oh, right, it was.

He reached out to his beautiful phantasm, always cast into such sharp relief. “Can’t you make it rain, my love?”

It had rained in London, in the height of their one golden summer, despite the rest of the county remaining as dry as a sponge in the desert. Could it be that he had been traversing a desert all along? Would he have to travel for forty years?

He snickered. “You made it rain over Father’s head.” He could practically see it now, a black thundercloud hanging over the carriage and following the Earl around. Thunder, cracking and rolling, rolling and cracking. “I wish I could walk on water.” James’s face also began to blur. “So I could walk all the way to you. _I'll cover the blue sea with stones and marble so I'll be able to come to you and Miranda._ ”

Outside the cabin, the first fat drops splattered on the ship’s planks and into the empty sails and buckets.

 

* * *

 

**_Spring 1710, the Right Indies_ **

 

“No-no-no,” Halsey was shaking his glorious beard vehemently, “you can’t do this! You simply can’t!”

“But if I don’t,” Thomas reasoned, “who will?”

“It is _completely_ out of touch with reality, God be my witness!”

“God has witnessed far worse things than-”

Before he could finish his argument, Ivola burst in, angry to the tips of her plaits. “We cannot sail like this! We are finished! Finished, say I!”

So much for my writing hour, Thomas thought. “What happened?” His imagination helpfully supplied an inexplicable full reversal of wind, a naval patrol, a leak, and, say, a mutiny. All at once.

“My stick! She stole it!”

He paused to adjust his patience. It was also a sort of a blanket, if invisible. He had had it since boyhood.

“Have you personally seen her do it?” he asked. “Are there any eye witnesses at all?”

“What eye witnesses? I _know_ it was she. _Always_.” She glared at Halsey. “You tell him!”

For all his qualms with the sheer monotony of a mariner’s life, a voyage halfway across the globe was bound to be an eventful one. Before reaching (as their Portuguese navigator assured him) the cruising grounds near Barbados, they had nearly been wrecked, sunk or died of thirst more times than it would be advisable to count, all the while following the Ivola-Skyla tug-of-war like a serial publication. Political factions rose and fell, but those two were always at the root of it.

Now things seemed to have finally come to a crux.

“Give me a couple of hours, please.” Thomas got up, gathering his notes. “We shall continue later, yes?”

Halsey shrugged. “It’s your novel.”

“ _One_ hour,” Ivola said after him.

Which was precisely why he had started with two or more.

Miss van Slembrouck - ‘Van Brook’ at most, as far as the crew was concerned - was feeding Mr. North, their stowaway monkey. Thus named by Halsey, after his previous quartermaster. Both of the ladies professed to have no knowledge of the heinous crime.

“If I had really wanted to steal it-” Skyla pushed her black hair out of her eyes; she had a thick braid, a yet thicker accent and an unflinching dedication to grammar- “I would have done it from the start, before she could suspect me.”

“Indeed,” Thomas agreed. “And believe me, I can only admire your dedication to recreating your homeland’s sophisticated political system in such a volatile environment. That being said, wouldn’t we all benefit from a truce between the two of you? And what better foundation for it than the recovery of her most prized possession?”

“If it were _only_ a possession, Thomas, it would not be an issue. But it has become her Stick of Office, and it was not even the _same_ stick that she had on St. Mary’s.”

He beamed at Skyla. “Lovely! So if we don’t find the thief, you can always present her with a _new_ one as an olive branch.”

She was not a picture of enthusiasm, to say the least.

Over the past stretch of seafaring (a stretch _indeed_ ), Thomas had had to play the magistrate a great deal more often than at every change of ship. It wasn’t the best job in the world, but then again, neither was it the absolute worst.

“Any luck with your search?” Halsey inquired in a casual tone, airing himself on his section of the deck.

“No, the carpenters swear it wasn’t them either.”

“That reminds me! Remember how I said your hero doesn’t talk right?”

“Only once or ten times.”

“Well, a carpenter’s son!” Halsey lowered his voice: “People will think you mean him to be a false Jesus.”

“Have you tried the cook?” asked another voice. “Perhaps she has run out of meat again. A stick stew could be very… fortifying.”

Thomas excused himself, to lean against the railing for a short spell. “Hello,” he mouthed. “I haven’t seen _you_ in a while.”

Where _was_ James when Thomas was trying to write him? “You’ve been busy.” James squinted at the horizon. “And I expect, there’s more of that coming.”

The merchantman was, in every respect, an excellent prize, sitting fat and low in the water. There was just one tiny problem with her, which they discovered a grappling hook too late: she had already been boarded by another pirate crew. As the ship’s purser, Thomas wanted nothing more than to stay out of it, but as a friend and an inveterate mediator, he couldn’t with all conscience let Ivola start a tavern brawl just because she didn’t like the other crew’s faces.

“Excuse me! Just a moment, please!” Thomas was a little proud of himself for getting across without any undue embarrassment. “If I may, why don’t we resolve this according to the ancient pirate custom?” Which he had just made up. “As brothers and sisters?”

Ivola cleared her throat. About that: only one side could boast anything so much as resembling sisters.

“The fuck are you talking about?” The other captain had a mane of hair, in a more probable condition than Halsey’s beard. He also sported what Thomas had come to know as the Classic Murderous Look in his eyes.

“The ancient pirate custom of our captains resolving it between themselves,” Halsey’s head began to bob with redoubled vehemence, “in a game of dice?” Halsey relaxed. “At least, that is how we do it on Madagascar.”

“You’re from _Madagascar_?” They were a lot to take in, Thomas concurred, noting a stirring among the dark-skinned population of the disputed prize. “What are you doing in our waters, then?”

“ _Kicking you off this ship_ ,” Ivola mouthed in Malagasy.

“Expanding our horizons, like all travellers do,” Thomas said loudly. “There is no undertaking that could not benefit from it.”

Much to his amazement, his point seemed to suffice, if not lessen the heavy suspicion clogging the air alongside the usual ship’s smells: “Fine. Why not.” The other pirate captain turned to bark out the orders at burly men who seemed to be native exclusively to dark alleys.

“Careful,” James whispered in Thomas’s ear. “This one is a born killer.” Weren’t most of them, though? “ _This_ one will be wanting your Indian Moghul’s treasure, Thomas.”

‘Why couldn’t they all just get along?’ was _not_ a question conducive to survival, but Thomas kept asking it anyway.

Halsey might not be so lucky in retirement, but never in his life had he lost a game of chance, or so he would have you believe.

A crate was set up for a table, the audience rumbling and the merchant captain wiping the sweat off his brow with the regularity of a parlour clock. Thomas looked at the man sympathetically and promised him that it would be all over quickly.

“Isn’t your cargo insured, sir?” Thomas went on. “For surely you cannot be held accountable for _two_ pirate crews attacking you at once.”

“‘Held accountable’?” The man stared at Thomas’s admittedly reddish coat. “My lads and I are about to be slaughtered!” He squinted in Halsey’s direction, with James partially blocking the view. “That’s not Captain Flint, is it?”

“No, it is not.” Thomas thought it best not to show his ignorance.

Halsey threw a twelve, his face and beard shining in the sun. The other got a measly four, at which point, Thomas leaned in and scooped up the dice, announcing a draw. Since both of their leaders were so lucky, a fifty-fifty split must be the way.

Skyla pulled Thomas aside. “Good job! I know not _how_ you do it, but it works like a charm.”

“And now we celebrate,” Ivola added with a predatory smile.

“Ivola, _no_ , you must not!”

“I promise you, _they_ plan something much, much worse.”

“I will _not_ condone what you have in mind.” And he fully intended to keep repeating himself until it sank in.

Ivola looked him square in the face. “ _You_ can try and make friends with every white man you meet. But I look after my pigs.” With that, she marched off.

Who had said anything about making friends? He simply strove to avoid any violence _or_ underhanded ploys from either party.

Skyla shook her head in disapproval. “They have not a single woman aboard. Mark my words, that is a _bad_ sign.”

To be perfectly fair, most women had more sense than to subject themselves to these conditions willingly.

“Your women are right, you know,” James told him. “You can’t be friends with everyone. Leastways, not without a preemptive show of force.”

“You stand corrected!”

Skyla followed Thomas’s gesture to a movement in the other pirates’ rigging; if they were to compare ships, the _Happy Pigs III_ may not come out the loser yet. Red, almost blood-coloured strands wove in and out of sight.

“It could be a boy,” was Skyla’s verdict. “You cannot tell at this distance.”

Captain Vane’s men were a rough lot indeed; but as the rum was shared around, the individual punches thrown did not spiral into a global mayhem. Not yet, anyhow. Instead,  they fell to such time-honoured piratical pastimes as drinking, singing and gossiping.

“Flint?” Charles echoed, grimacing like he had just stepped under the wrong window on a busy London street. Captain Hughes, the merchant, had been put in the brig, and it was probably the safest place for him right now. “I’ll tell you about Fucking Flint.”

Keeping tabs on one’s worst enemy could be but a step away from following an object of your admiration, but Thomas wisely did not point that out.

“Is he red?” was Halsey’s question, Vane having paused to wet his throat.

The great cabin had been searched twice, but Charles still looked like he should very much like to pry off another plank. “Fuck yes, he never washes his ugly mug.”

“Nay, is he a red man?”

“An Indian? Nah. Maybe a Scotsman, but who the hell cares?”

Halsey drank some more too, before making a third attempt: “Is he like that?” He pointed up at a red-haired nymph on the ceiling.

“Fucking hell!” Vane thought about it. “Nah, not every ship is a floating madhouse like yours.”

“Is his _hair_ red?” Thomas intervened, caught between amusement and incredulity. This must be Halsey’s revenge for all those late night readings. “When the blood _does_ come off.”

“No, it’s this strange greasy colour.”

As opposed to literally every seaman’s?

“Does he have freckles?” Halsey insisted.

“Who the fuck knows what’s under all that grime?” asked Vane, who had not bothered to wash off the battle paint.

As they sat down at the table, Thomas did his best to steer the conversation to something more productive: “Any distinguishing features at all? Scars?”

Vane’s eyes briefly focused on Thomas’s right cheek again and then moved to Halsey. “Drinking from your own bottle, eh?”

“So are you,” Thomas pointed out, suddenly anxious to know if his conscientious objections had been ignored or not.

“Yeah, too bad I’ve switched ‘em.” Vane’s grin was shark-like. “Now we talk business.”

On that cue, Halsey slumped forward with a loud thud.

Thomas froze, his stomach churning. “Knife under the table,” James whispered, his hands squeezing Thomas’s shoulders. “Another in his boot. But if you play your cards right, you won’t need to know where else he stashes his blades.”

Thomas sat up straighter. Halsey, to his _immense_ relief, began to snore.

James gestured at the cabin door. “Can you hear that?” Thomas repeated after him. “That’s the sound of your men _not_ doing their bloody business because they have _all_ been drinking from the wrong bottle.” Thomas smiled a little. “And between the two of us, which would you say our captives would choose as the lesser evil?”

Vane swore under his breath, his knife ready to strike. “Is your cargo even worth it?”

“I’m afraid not.” James picked up: “There are rumours of England taking an interest in Madagascar again.”

“So you ran,” Charles guessed flatly, none too impressed.

“So we decided to see how the matters stand in these Indies.”

Vane had just been after an easy mark, and complications and the talk of Madagascar were neither here nor there.

The door was thrown open, Ivola charging in with a pistol and a cutlass. Nobody made another move.

“Why don’t we go back to the original plan?” Thomas suggested. “Parting ways on amicable terms?”

 

* * *

 

The wind chose that moment to drop, leaving the three increasingly less happy ships stuck with one another. In the afternoon, Vane decided to relieve the tension with a spot of good old-fashioned sword-clanging.

“Does he secretly want to win the Olympics?” Skyla wondered. “Because he is a little in the wrong century for that.”

Thomas massaged his temples, fighting off a headache at all those tight muscles and tighter masculine bonding. Dear God, he was turning into a grumpy old man!

“Oh, _you_ have a headache, do you?” Halsey groaned. “I was poisoned with the wrong rum!”

“Poisoned men don’t always live to complain, my friend.”

“You!” A cutlass was tossed at Thomas unceremoniously, hitting him in the chest. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He had stopped asking ‘why me?’ back in England, but this was a new low. “I’d really rather not,” he said to Vane’s bare chest carefully. “If it’s all the same to you.”

“You’re not man enough, is that it? Your women always doing your fighting for you?”

“You have never seen lions hunt, have you?” And also: Good Lord in Heaven, what am I doing?

He had always considered himself above such provocations - growing up with a father like his, one had to grow a thick skin. Back in Eton, he would turn the joke on the bully until the latter was ready to learn how to be a good person.

But bullies, they had a way of finding you, especially at sea, and he had been scraped too raw. His crew - his friends - rushed to watch, exchanging horrified looks as he and Vane circled each other.

“Who taught you to hold a sword?”

“A tutor,” he admitted.

“Also a woman?” The pirate knocked it out of Thomas’s grip. “You’re dead. Pick it up.”

“You’re dead,” he repeated with a gusto time after time, leaving painful nicks on Thomas’s arms and torso. “Where _did_ you get that scar, shaving?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, it was an accident with a sharp razor.” Just before the _Tiger_ had gone down. “A prodigiously sharp one.” By now, it had faded to a pale pink crescent.

The crowd laughed. Before Vane could finish _his_ laugh, Thomas moved, performing an elegant sequence that landed Vane flat on his back. In broad daylight and without the paint on, his bravado had lost a decade.

“I have endured a real madhouse, a terrible father, a treacherous friend, a forced separation from my lovers - one of them, by the way, a _man_ \- a voyage to India and back, a shipwreck, a deadly fever and a loss of all hope. _I have broken myself out of bloody Bedlam_. So I will not be treated like that ever again, and especially not by you, _Captain_ Vane.”

A silence fell, a silence a lot like after his speech in his parlour, one of the many beginnings of his end. There had been so bloody many.

But his blade at his opponent’s throat did not falter. “Do we understand each other now?”

Vane broke into a savage grin. “ _Now_ we’re talking.”

How much one outburst could change. Thomas went from the kindly, out-of-this-world purser with a shaving problem to a force to be reckoned with. The Pigs were _proud_ of him.

‘Mariner’ did have a nicer ring to it than ‘Martyr’.

 

* * *

 

Being a reasonably crafty individual, Thomas had been counting on the prize’s library falling into his hands. Starved for new reading material, he practically threw himself at the shelf, beside which one of Vane’s men already had his nose in _Meditations on First Philosophy._

“Hello, Jack’s the name,” the young man thrust out his free hand, “pleasure to meet you, Mr. Goodhope!”

Thomas shook it. “Descartes?”

“What can I say? If an English noble can disarm our Cap’n, then maybe a humble ol’ Jack can learn to read.”

Thomas smiled. “I have tried Descartes in Latin and French several times, and I am none the wiser for it. A noble, though? My family could easily be rich traders.”

“It’s your bearing,” Jack replied. “You can’t hide it.”

He would have to try harder, then. “I thought it had all washed out.” With a start, he noticed the red-haired waif, watching him hawkishly from under the table. “Oh, hello.”

“That’s Anne. She’s not from Bedlam, but she’s had a pretty rough time too.”

“Hello, Anne.” Thomas knelt down on the floor, making no abrupt movements. “Have you got a blanket?” Everybody needed one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two Latin quotes in the beginning are Horace and Seneca's shortened version: 'Those who cross the sea, change sky, but not soul'. The stones and marbles line is a Greek folk song from Byzantine times.
> 
> Anne is in her teens here, already up in the rigging and all but still very traumatised. Jack is 'a young man', but somewhere in his twenties (I can never tell his age tbh). Thomas giving Anne a blanket when she could use one >>> timelines.


	4. A Decent Pair of Boots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is still at large and wrecking tragic plots.

                                                                                                        “ _The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury_.”

                                                                                                         ― Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_

 

There is no feeling in the world like the realisation that you are not alone. There are others like you, and you could join them should you choose so. This wonder, this sense of belonging is a pure communion of souls, beyond all borders and barriers. It is, as Thomas had always imagined, the flip side of the Biblical narrative: one that spoke of hope, renewal and redemption.

“You worry about her,” said Ivola, watching him watch the ship’s frothy wake.

“I worry about many people,” he replied evenly. “Which one do you mean?”

“Blood-Haired Girl.”

Once again, his thoughts went back to the look on Anne’s face when the women had come near her, smiling, talking or laughing. They had been too many, too fast. And when Jack had called, she had returned to his side, her new colourful cloth billowing behind her in the breeze.

“ _Of course_ I am worried. She is so very young and she has already seen so much evil in the world. I wish we could’ve shown her more of what else there is to life.”

“How old are you?” Skyla wondered, Ivola habitually bristling up at her approach.

That gave him a longer pause than strictly necessary to answer such a simple question. “Old enough to be a father.” What an outlandish notion!

He pushed away the image of a child greeting him at the entrance to Miranda’s make-believe house. Too many foolish hopes could kill a man as surely as Borage and Hellebore.

He glanced between the ladies. “Are you ready for tonight?”

It hadn’t been his idea - if anything, he had advised everyone to have more patience, now that they were so close to the Bahamas. But the encounter with Vane’s men had shaken them up, and the Stick’s continued absence did not help the matters any. Thomas’s Nassau was not _their_ Nassau - and they wanted to be strong and ready for whatever it had to throw at them.

Ivola flashed her teeth at her rival. “Ready as rain.” Skyla met Ivola’s grin with a proud tilt of her head, tossing her braid back over her shoulder.

The first item on the voting agenda was, alas, Halsey’s captaincy. The crew did not feel that he and his beard had represented them to their advantage.

“Pigs!” Halsey fumed. “They call themselves _Pigs_ , and _I_ am the embarrassment here?”

Thomas patted his shoulder. “You are not without loyal supporters.” He had done what he could. The trouble was,

“We want you,” said Brás, the navigator. “After your speech, we all want you for captain.”

“Why can’t it be Ivola?” With Skyla for quartermaster.

“Don’t you know her? She’d learnt to scavenge before she learnt to walk,” Halsey mouthed. “She _has_ to be the first one to every prize.”

In their scenario, the captain was the figurehead’s mate, the king in this lunatic chess. All the more reason why Thomas was an extremely poor choice.

“The thing to do,” James commented, his back against a barrel, “is to stop protesting too much and let it happen.” He smiled at Thomas’s indignation. “So you can abdicate in Halsey’s favour.”

He… could do that? Without an Act of Parliament?

There was no France to flee to and no great seals of the realm to drop, after King James's example - the closest thing having already been misplaced - so he settled for:

“I am _terribly_ sorry, my friends, but I have just remembered a taboo we Etonians have against being crowned on a... Friday.” Or at least he hoped that he had got the day right.

After the ship-wide booing had died down, the next item was even worse - those of them knowledgeable in the ways of the wooden argosies desired to stop and _careen_.

Days away from their final destination.

“ _You_ told me to step down!” Thomas glowered at James. “And Halsey won’t help me!” In fact, the closer they got to Nassau, the less enthusiasm Halsey showed for their arrival.

Skyla raised her eyebrows. “Who are you talking to? Me?”

He sighed. He should _probably_ curb these debating sessions before they got completely out of hand. But the mere idea of letting James go was… well, it was not to be borne. Not yet. “Can you promise me that our ship won’t fall apart?”

“The _Pigs I_ was a wreck.”

“ _Can_ you, Skyla?”

“We are too slow and too heavy, Thomas. What if we need to run from under the fort’s guns?”

“What fort?”

“Fort Nassau,” James supplied, with every appearance of helping.

“But why on earth would Fort Nassau fire upon us?”

Everybody was against him! Conspiring to ruin his timing! First, they had missed the Fool’s Day and now Easter!

James snorted at him. “If you are so attached to the symbolism, why don’t you wait another year?”

“Thank you, but no, thank you!”

Careening was a dreadful, back-breaking toil, putting as great a strain on the ship herself as on her people. James - the real James - should see him now, sweating like, well, a Pig

“Look at these beauties!” Ivola boomed in her best Halsey imitation. Thomas shrank back from a pair of long, slimy grey worms dangling from her hands. “We make a fine stew!”

Yes, dearest, he would say to Miranda. There is no kind of stew left that I _haven’t_ tried.

“They taste just like... “ James paused for dramatic effect. “Oysters.”

Thomas liked oysters, though not as much as James and Miranda did. But these ship-eaters were a species unto themselves, saw-toothed and as devastating as locusts.

The Pigs broomed and breamed and made use of every other word in James’s oscure dictionary. Which must create an entirely wrong impression - in truth, there was more singing than at any bacchanal. Fishing vessels set them up for foodstuffs, with someone invariably giving Thomas an earful whenever he tried to barter or otherwise cushion the blow.

“What if there is some crucial change while we are hiding away?” he kept asking. “What if the war ends?”

“What war?” Ivola asked moodily. The Spanish succession was news to her.

Thomas approached Skyla, trying to gauge whether she had finally got what she wanted. Item Three, the Quartermaster.

Closer to her thirties than twenties, she was born into a seafaring merchant family and had broken away from them after they had sold her secret lover, a free black man, into slavery. She had been looking for him for years before winding up on Madagascar.The Bahamas could be a new beginning for her or a return to the old.

“ _These dwarf islands have no real woods_ ,” she grumbled in Dutch. “ _Nothing that can make a good stick_.” He blinked. “ _Yes, I remember your advice._ ”

“ _I will help you_ ,” he replied in the same tongue. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

She elbowed him. “Should I grow a second pair?”

Just what their floating asylum had been missing.

Their departure saw a full complement of masts - yes, three, and Thomas could maybe name them: Fork, Main and Misery - but still no stick. He asked James if they finally had a taut ship.

“Hmm. Aren’t you forgetting something?”

They had forgotten to load back the plunder and half the cannons, but other than that, no, nothing.

This portion of the Leeward Islands reminded Thomas of what would happen if England, France, Spain and Denmark decided to bob for apples in the Caribbean. He couldn’t quite work out if the apples would be the bits of land themselves or the ships, though. Either way, just sailing in a straight line, they were crossing borders like latitude lines.

“‘In a straight line’?” Brás repeated; even his heavy earrings seemed amazed.

“Well. You know what I meant.”

It was an early morning, the wind blowing as if at a bowl of stew, when the sunrise illuminated a tall, mighty ship with a distinctly militant air.

“This ain’t _just_ bad luck, this is Ivola’s curses coming true!” Halsey moaned.

There was some rush to drop off the ballast, but, the general consensus was, the Royal Navy had them where it wanted them.

“Don’t panic!” Thomas urged, packing. “Do we still have the original paperwork? Please say ‘yes’!”

“Yes!” Skyla gave him a Look. “What of it?”

“Captain Hughes here,” he gestured at Halsey, “has been separated from his squadron. So he decided to sell his goods in his native Boston instead.” Didn’t they usually buy the Cuban sugar there, despite the war? Oh bother, he couldn’t remember it all! “Hopefully, they wouldn’t search us deck by deck.”

Their red flag was carefully bundled up in the Blanket and most of the original disguises were put back on. Including Skyla’s supremely unconvincing moustache. Their morale was not what anyone would call ideal and everybody was giving Ivola a ridiculously wide berth, starting with their Captain.

“Do I have to?” After a nudge from Thomas, he stepped forward, thrusting out his chest. “Listen to me, you lot! We have survived Mama Corra, a hurricane, an ocean, two major leaks, no water, Ivola’s Stick and Temper Tantrums, Van Brook’s moustache, Captain Vane and his jolly cutthroats, and, last but not the least, Thomas’s dialogues with his imaginary friends.” Er. “We have sunk our fair share of ships, so let the next one _not_ be ours!”

“What a remarkably _rousing_ speech,” James remarked as the Pigs cheered.

Was it too late to run? “Can’t you take the wheel?”

“No, I’m good here.”

 _Good_ indeed.

“Just one more thing,” James added. “I thought you were against underhanded tactics?”

Thomas gripped the railing. “The Navy, James, deserves far, far worse than _my_ anger.”

His heart was firmly lodged somewhere in the regions of his throat as the man-of-war blocked the horizon. After a drawn-out moment, she sent out a boat, demanding their captain’s presence. Thomas, Ivola and a couple of other short-straws formed the rest of the party.

The sea was a great leveller; after a while, all seamen seemed to wear the same face ( _not_ James’s, mind you), even those of different skin colours. But the Navy captain had a gleam in his eye, one that spoke of a particular malice left unchecked. After a cursory glance at their papers and a number of questions like: ‘Trading with the enemy, eh?’ - he told them that he would be escorting them the rest of the way.

As they stepped back on deck, Thomas couldn’t help looking at the ship’s swivels. She had two sets, mounted at the bow and stern - forget the heavier arms, a single sweep from these, and they would be done for.

“Bostonians, are you?” asked the Naval purser. What seemed like every drop of what he had been drinking last night was rolling off him like a current. “You don’t sound like it.”

“I am originally from London,” he answered stiffly. “Why?”

“Something ain’t right about you.”

Please don’t do this, Thomas willed him silently. We have been doing _so_ well.

“Billy!” the captain bellowed. “Where is that blasted boy?”

The purser grinned, his teeth… well. Unmentionable. “You’ve sent him aloft, Cap’n. To look for that bucket he dropped overboard. He’s been up there ever since.”

“But if the ship keeps moving forward, how would you fish it out?” Thomas wondered.

They stared at him.

In a calm sea and given enough water, the punishment would have been more of a reprieve. However, _without_ it, it was as hellish as anything short of drawing blood. The Navy captain ordered the poor lad down because his boots needed cleaning, the purser snickering at Thomas’s squeamishness.

And this is how we build our empires, Thomas thought. Ivola wrinkled her nose as the boy tripped over his own long legs. He wasn’t well enough to walk, let alone do any chores.

“I do it,” came from Thomas’s right. He started. Ivola’s face was _never_ this carefully blank unless she meant it. “‘Master’.” Oh dear, someone was going to have to eat those boots.

It would be dreadfully unfair on the boots.

They _should_ have waited for nightfall, as per the original plan. But Ivola’s knife was already at the Navy man’s throat.

“Everyone’s a fucking pirate.” He looked at Thomas, unphased. “Surrender now, and it’ll be a bullet for you instead of the noose.”

Thomas raised the man’s own pistol, voice harsh and scarcely recognisable as he ordered: “ _Drop your weapons_.” He hadn’t a clue about the standard protocol for such a hostage situation - after all, there was only so much that an imaginary friend could tell you.

The Marines did not drop anything, not even the attitude.

“Glory and gold!” Halsey cried, firing a large blunderbuss mounted astern. “And perfect beards!”

Later, Thomas would be quite unable to reconstruct the exact sequence of events. It began with a backward headbutt, Ivola’s knife drawing a shallow line across the Navy man’s throat. The _Pigs_ having drifted closer, her boarders swarmed in, and all hell broke loose.

It was a terrible fight, with the pressed men caught in between. Most were too sick and malnourished to do anything, but after Ivola had stood up for the boy, they did their best.

Thomas lost track of the Navy captain, being too busy trying not to skewer anyone or be shot to death himself. He sailed out of the fog at the sight of the boy choking his tormentor with a set of heavy manacles on a long chain.

The man seemed to have an endless supply of air, thrashing violently even as his face went from red to purple. He sent them both crashing against the railing, the lad nearly falling overboard.

“Stop!” Thomas yelled, even as two things happened more or less at once: the Navy captain charged _him_ instead and the lad stumbled across a discarded cutlass.

James yanked Thomas aside, and the man lost his balance, slipping on a pool of blood. The lad raised his sword.

Meeting the lad’s eyes, Thomas repeated imploringly: “ _Please_ stop. You don’t want this man’s death on your conscience, trust me.”

“Haven’t you seen enough? _Haven’t_ you?”

Thomas couldn’t tell who was asking the question, the boy or his James. “Yes, I have. But murder is not the right path to regain lost freedom.”

That gave the boy a pause. The butt of Ivola’s musket knocked the man out. “Interrupt anything important?”

Thomas smiled. “Thank you, Ivola.”

She petted his matted hair, his hat having mysteriously vanished. “You never change.”

The _Pigs_ was too small to carry much besides their trophy swivels and ammunition plus a handful of new volunteers. The Marines and other loyalists were trussed up, the captain tied to the mast with a boot sole in his mouth. Choices were important, but Thomas couldn’t make them for other people.

 

* * *

 

Their flag, with its lopsided white heart set against the red, flew proudly in the strengthening wind. When the night finally overtook them, they were making over eight knots, with not a sail in sight.

“How are you bearing up, Billy?” Thomas asked. “Also, hello and welcome aboard our floating... last refuge of the mad and the hopeful.”

The lad stared at him, sniffing at the offered herbal brew. “Better than yesterday. How is your wound, sir?”

Not much to talk about - he appeared to have been charmed. “Thomas is the name. Let us hope the women don’t mind you overmuch.”

“Are they all seamen?” the lad marvelled.

“Seawomen, I suppose, but yes, they can tell a sea jib from a mocking jibe, and turn both against you in a heartbeat. Once again, welcome aboard.”

Billy proved to be a quiet, thoughtful fellow. Despite his already considerable height, he never hit his forehead on any treacherous bits of ship’s wood sticking out and was never in anybody’s way - on the contrary, you could always count on him to be helpful.

“What is he, sixteen?” James mused. “Adoption attempt number two?”

“Oh hush, you.” Thomas sat down beside the boy. “I have been trying to place your speech… Kensington?” The boy’s shoulders stiffened. “You have that look about you. The one that says you are a long way from home. I must admit, usually I’m the one being told that.”

“A ship’s the only place I’ve got,” Billy mumbled defiantly, without looking up.

“You could go back home.” It was painful, but necessary to hear those words, being as lost as they were. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

Now the lad did look at him. “Are you going home?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking, I am. My home is the people I love, and I’m hoping to find them soon.” He pointed at the rope. “Will you teach me how to do that?”

“You don’t know how to splice an eye?”

“I don’t even know _why_ you must do that.”

“Oh no,” James whispered. “He is acquiring his own Dealing-With-Thomas Stare.”

They fell to talking, about London and other things. Just as Thomas had suspected, Billy was from a good family.

“So you aren’t a pirate, then?”

“ _Why_ do they keep unravelling?” Thomas glared at his two rope ends. “I am a reluctant mariner.”

“You have to marry them together, like so.” Billy’s notions of piracy were married to pamphlets.

“But that’s a captain or a chaplain’s job!”

James was laughing quietly. “Definitely a Dealing-With-Thomas Look.”

Thomas had just remembered a relevant quote from the Emperor’s writings. For all that he and Billy had been at sea for more or less the same amount of time, they had learnt very different things from it.

Except for one: there was no telling what each new tomorrow would bring.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **ETA** : All thanks to the wonderful Dr_Doomsduck, we now have Thomas and Skyla's exchange in actual Dutch:
> 
> “Deze dwergeilandjes hebben geen echte bossen,” she grumbled in Dutch. “Niks waar je een goede stok van kan maken.” He blinked. “Ja, ik herinner me je advies.”
> 
> “Ik zal je wel helpen,” he replied in the same tongue. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”  
> \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
> I'm putting it down here because I don't know how to make clickable footnotes on AO3.
> 
> 'Borage and Hellebore' are a cure for melancholy. I have no idea what ship worm tastes like but I've seen pictures of people making that stew :) Billy is in this story because Thomas and his Blanket Problem have completely got out of hand.


	5. The Pigs Among the Wolves (To Say Nothing of the Monkeys and the Walrus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and the Pigs vs. Nassau, Round One.

                                                                                                                                                                       “ _Everyone lives by selling something_.”

                                                                                                                                                                       – Robert Louis Stevenson

 

_“Miranda!” Thomas protests with a laugh, squirming away to other side of the bed, where he bumps into a sleepy James. “That tickles!” Some secret marital weapons, such as highly detailed maps of his ticklish spots, are too terrible to be unleashed. “James, nooo! Whose side are you on?”_

A more awake part of Thomas’s brain kindly informed him (also in Miranda’s voice) that he wasn’t on St. Mary’s anymore, so the chances of her hands having shrunk to monkey-size were very slim indeed.

He bolted upright. “Not the mango seeds, you rascal!” He hadn’t been sleeping on them for months only to lose them within sight of Nassau shores!

Unlike many of Madagascar’s primates, Mr. North was by no means a night-dweller. On the contrary, she was at her finest during breakfast time or when you were trying to hold onto the last vestiges of your hard-won sleep.

And she could _always_ give Billy a run for his money.

“My seeds!” Thomas shouted, bursting out of the cabin. “Skyla! Billy! _Somebody_!”

He practically bumped into their Quartermaster - and ground to a halt because _how_ could Mr. North be up there _and_ on Skyla’s shoulder simultaneously?

Forget his paradisiac mango grove, “Have I finally lost my mind?” Another case of a terrible timing.

“Did the monkey steal it, or do you keep it in your pocket?” she parried.

“What, my mind? No,” he wasn’t wearing any breeches, “but I’m starting to warm up to our next ship being a _Monkey_.”

James took pity on him: “They have always been two, Thomas: Mr. North and Mrs. West. The _varikandra_ come in strange pairs, just like us dreamers.”

So he had been feeling guilty about stranding the pest so far away from her people for nothing? “More importantly, my seeds!”

He knew not what it was with these creatures and mangoes, but that fruit was Biblical to them. The thief paused to gnaw on the hard shell, which was when Billy finally got her. Once the shell had been prized out and replaced with a sweetmeat, she happily climbed the boy instead, viewing him as a sort of a walking tree-in-training.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Thomas breathed out in relief. “You’re a lifesaver!” The boy smiled at him, a little nervously on account of Mr. North’s sharp teeth. “So, which one of them is which?”

They both had black tails longer than they were tall; wet noses; snow white ruffles framing their faux-innocent miens; keen amber-coloured eyes, and a propensity for climbing everything of interest to Monsieur Descartes. Trying to tell them apart was like trying to tell a Van Dyke from a masterful forgery.

“ _That_ one is Mr. North,” Halsey pointed at Skyla’s copy. “Just look at those teeth! As small as ol’ Nate’s.”

… hold on. Before Skyla could do a thing, Mr. North and _another_ mango seed were off and up and further up.

Could it be this merry duo was behind the Stick’s disappearing act?

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Skyla replied. “They always look like they have their own agenda.”

“Have we got any Naval coffee left?” Thomas asked in resignation, rubbing his hand over his face. They - still the monkeys - were lucky that eating them was a taboo for half the ship and superstition always won over.

“I say be Mrs. West my missing uncle,” Ivola dropped in passing. “He ran away into the woods years ago.”

Sharing the living quarters with Halsey came with only two considerable disadvantages. The first one was being caught at his imaginary congresses (that including the time when he had tried to nuzzle James’s ponytail). The second was bearing witness to Halsey’s beard-grooming rituals over the coffee. He almost preferred the suspense of the bygone days of fever and watermelons - some men were just born _too_ lucky.

“Put the razor down, Thomas,” Halsey said, not unkindly.

“But I can’t go ashore looking like this!”

What _he_ had was a scraggly, ill-formed accident of nature, as his reflection in the washbasin happily showed him.

A long-suffering sigh later, the razor migrated into his friend’s hands. It would probably never cease to amaze Thomas what an odd collection of mismatched skills Halsey was.

“Thomas. _Breathe_.”

Thomas exhaled slowly, letting his hands drop from their shielding position.

“Go to your safe place now, aye? I’ll be quick.”

Thomas looked at him. “I’m so sorry you have to deal with… all this.” Imaginary congresses, wild behaviour, his mind’s wanderings hither and thither, his bouts of childish recklessness interspersed with panic attacks...

What a gift he was bringing to his loves.

“‘s alright,” Halsey muttered. “But we’d better get on with it before all the soap dribbles off.”

Right.

Thomas ran his thumb over his last surviving would-be mango, focusing on its uneven texture.

James had returned from Nassau a heart-stopping picture. The moment he stepped into the room, it was a Bonfire Night in Thomas’s head, and all the way below, too. It was all he could not to embrace his valiant sailor there and then.

Halsey swatted at him with the washcloth. “There, all done, Mr. Moondweller.”

“Ha! That’s a good one.” Thomas touched his smooth cheeks, peering into the water and seeing too much soap.

“I don’t know what you’ve got to worry about, mate. Either they’re just as mad, so they’ll be right over the moon with you, or they don’t deserve you.” He gave Thomas a nudge. “And no, you’re not supposed to argue with that.”

Thomas grinned. “They’ll be _very_ pleased to meet you, Cap’n Avery.”

“So long as they don’t go after my treasure!”

 

* * *

 

Nassau’s harbour was dazzlingly, rivetingly beautiful, its turquoise spread as vibrant as Life itself. What with one thing and another, Thomas had completely forgotten to expect that. And yes, he _was_ aware that the town had an English name, but England and all of its inescapabilities were the last thing on his mind right now. No more bad dreams - at least, not for a while.

“Thomas!” Skyla called out, leaning over the railing. “We have a problem!”

“Forgive me, but _no_.” No more bad dreams _or_ nightmarish detours.

“Captain Beard has locked himself in and refuses to come out!”

“Good grief, _why_? He was perfectly fine when I left him!”

Thomas had been the first to the boat, showing more haste than when any of his ships had been sinking. The only reason why he hadn’t tried to swim across instead was his naive hope to arrive in a semi-presentable state and with his pockets filled with all the right things - the sea not being among them.

“Go,” Ivola butted in. “We deal with it.” She hollered Billy’s name.

They would probably have to talk about Billy _not_ being a cabin boy anymore. At some distant point after the Reunion.

Mother Nature had given more ground here than on St. Mary’s, patchwork buildings rising to form a couple of streets, but that concession seemed all too transient. Even so, Thomas marvelled at how much had been rebuilt since the last Spanish raid. Some of his fellow Pigs had never seen a town this big.

Indeed, wreckage was not the end.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the tarpaulin _moving_. Next, the monkeys were at large, swinging themselves over the edge of the boat and bounding away before he or anyone else could stop them.

He turned to Betick, a young mulatto who had wanted to see the world more than his mother had been afraid of the world seeing him. “I must be off to-”

“Find your two loves, yes!” _Everybody_ in the boat broke into toothy grins, followed by frankly embarrassing cheers and hoots.

He put on a burst of speed, reciting Jack’s directions under his breath. Nassau could weather a pair of monkeys and a parcel of pigs without his supervision.

At the morning hour, the town’s marketplace was buzzing with activity, reminiscent of the colourful bazaars of Arabia and Levant. The awnings kept the sun at bay, and the noise did not distract, but rather immerse.

His manic eagerness ran up against a look of stony incomprehension. The bookseller waved the small prayer-book at him, asking if he wanted it or not. Most of her stock was Bibles and prayer-books in varying stages of decay, with an occasional stolen personal journal thrown in.

“Yes, yes,” he handed her more coin than the entire display was worth, her eyes widening, “Now, please, focus. A frequent customer of yours,” how _do_ you describe Miranda without waxing poetic? “A lady this height, rich nut-brown hair, brown eyes. Bibles, classics, poetry, English, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek-”

“Dunno anything ‘bout that,” the woman cut in. “All them Puritans live on their plantations.”

The island seemed so much _smaller_ in ink. “But surely they must shop in town?” Where else would they go?

At which point, the shouting commenced.

“Daylight robbery!” Halsey paused to catch his breath, red in the face and glaring around himself as if he were actually surrounded by a band of thieves. “Daylight robbery, Goodhope! This never would’ve happened in Boston!” He seized Thomas by the front of his coat… accidentally tearing a button off. “Are you my purser or not?”

“We are in Nassau,” Thomas reminded him, as tactfully as he could muster after his best coat had been ruined on the Reunion Day. “From what I understand, robbery of all kinds is _the_ way.”

“Thomas, this is no time for your fancy rhetorics! If we don’t sell off this cargo, it’s the rocks for us! Do you hear me? The rocks!”

“ _Five_ years, John!”

After an awkward pause, Halsey asked sheepishly: “So what’s five more minutes, eh?”

“Oh bugger you all with the ghost of Ivola’s Stick!”

Halsey slapped him on the back, taking it as the long-awaited sign that there _was_ a proper pirate buried somewhere in there.

The voice of the daylight robbery carried like a whip crack, from the makeshift trading post in the harbour:

“I don’t give a flying fuck if you’re a woman or a fucking elephant, your cargo isn’t worth the sacks it’s packed into!”

“Look who’s finally decided to show up,” said Vane, who appeared to be lounging nearby just for the sake of the free entertainment. “We were beginning to think your leaky tub has sunk.”

“There have been some… minor difficulties.” Patience in all things. “What is this about, then?” Skyla was never this close to shooting someone outside of an actual fight.

“Haven’t you heard? This is who runs the island these days.”

No, Thomas thought, you have decidedly made it a surprise. That, or you were too busy ranting about Captain Flint to say anything.

“The lady in charge is Miss Eleanor Guthrie, then? Daughter of Richard Guthrie?”

Jack grinned at Thomas, and whispered, “My money’s on you, by the way.” He held up his thumbs. Anne met Thomas’s inquisitive gaze from under her wide-brimmed hat and did not look away at once, which was a warm ‘hello’ in Anne-speak.

As much as Thomas would have liked to note some family resemblance between the father and daughter, or better yet, the lack of thereof, the truth was, all his supposedly careful planning had amounted to but one interview with Mr. Guthrie, in London and in Father’s presence. His knowledge and expectations of that family were sorely out of date.

The truth was, as ever, stranger than the inner workings of _one_ mind. Not only did Miss Guthrie talk like a pirate but also glare like a dozen, on the average.

“Wait a moment... I _know_ you,” she said, Thomas’s stomach lurching. “You’re _that_ Halsey.” His friend took a hasty step back. “The largest debt ever made in Boston!”

That… explained the need for the Indian treasure, at least.

Vane elbowed Jack, smug with the promise of an easy victory.

And Miss Guthrie wasn’t even done yet: “The money you owe my family, I can seize your whole fucking ship right now.”

Skyla, for her part, seemed ready to sell Halsey to the nearest butcher first.

Thomas cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Miss Guthrie?”

“And you are?” she asked dismissively, only just noticing him.

“My name is Thomas, Thomas Goodhope. Your father isn’t here, I take it?” She carried herself like somebody who had already thrown off the parental yoke… and danced around the bonfire, most likely.

“I don’t need my father here to collect what’s owed to us.”

Thomas smiled. “Of that, I have not the slightest doubt.”

“She is bluffing,” James murmured. “A couple of bodyguards, no real militia, just Vane, who’s his own side.” What about those Africans? “Don’t try to charm her. Speak to her in her own language, like you do with the crew.”

“I have not been a pirate long,” Thomas went on, “but do you, by any chance, mean to say that our ship is property of one man?” Miss Guthrie stared at him unblinkingly. “As opposed to a joint possession? Would you have us _all_ answer for a five-year-old debt?”

“Yes, what would other crews make of that?” Skyla added, catching on.

Eleanor frowned. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Never in life, but from where I’m standing, if you wish to settle the matter, we must first resolve the issue of our cargo.”

“It has already been resolved - it’s shit.”

Skyla murmured in Dutch that it had been dry when they unloaded it, a rare consensus between her and Ivola - the latter none too pleased that another woman should be so rude to her nemesis. But from there on, their opinions diverged: Ivola believed that the Pigs had been pigs, while Skyla suspected deliberate tampering.

“If the sacks have only just got damp,” Thomas reasoned, “shouldn’t we be rescuing the contents instead of arguing?” They got on that. “Also, do you take your tea in a cup or a tankard, Miss?”

His idea took some time selling, Eleanor watching him through narrowed eyes all the while.

“Are you trying to have your tea at _my_ expense?”

His smile was entirely innocent of any personal gain in mind. “Would you prefer coffee?”

Eleanor shook her head at him and stalked off, her keys jangling together uncomfortably like those of Bedlam’s embezzling mistress. He brushed off the association like an old cobweb, unwilling to let it poison his present.

“See that man over there with her?” Ivola whispered in Thomas’s ear, talking about a well-dressed black man with facial markings. “He offered buy up quick, but then the girl showed up. Something not right here.”

Thomas really, _really_ had no space in his head for untangling this knot right now. Debts, profits, refitting, it all should have waited until _after_ the hurricane season! But as it turned out, they hadn’t any drinking money to begin with, and that _was_ Thomas’s problem.

How one takes her tea says a lot about a person. Eleanor took it by storm, displaying her best china and utter disdain for the waterlogged transaction. The white-and-blue set cut a striking contrast with the crude crate.

Following a hasty repacking, some sugar was to be scooped up from each of the new sacks and mixed into tea. If the result still tasted like tea, then the sugar was still merchandise; if it tasted like the sea instead, then it was no good. Tea being expensive, they soon switched to simply licking the spoon, playing it like a schoolboy contest.

The harbour had been greatly entertained indeed.

“A goddamn Navy ship,” Halsey was muttering, not having _quite_ got over the incident with the wrong bottle or the loss of one third the hard won booty yet. It would come to him in a while.

Jack glanced between them. “A close shave, eh?”

“Shaving jokes, _very_ mature.”

Thomas’s cues to Halsey were completely in vain: “Aye, Thomas tied the scurvy buggerer to the mast and Ivola made him _eat_ his boots. Literally. No offence to them other buggerers.”

Vane laughed. “Yeah, and our Annie’s Queen Anne in disguise.”

“The giant jumping rats of Madagascar are quite nice,” Thomas said, apropos of nothing.

“Yeah, maybe I am,” Anne mouthed.

“Sure you are, darling.” Jack peered into the boiling cauldron. “Is that your new caulking?”

“No,” Thomas replied, stirring it rapidly. “When life gives you salted sugar, make toughy.” They used to make it every Bonfire Night back at school.

Seawater-flavoured, it tasted _entirely_ strange. Vane almost broke a tooth, but other than that, it became surprisingly popular. They should have probably put a price on it, instead of just sharing it around.

“Halsey!” someone yelled in the background, charging Halsey from the other end of the beach. “Is that you, or do my eyes deceive me?”

“Naft, you old villain!” They came together in an exuberant embrace. “I can’t bloody believe it! After all this time!”

“You’re alive!”

“Aye! And we’re real pirates!”

“That explains... pretty much everything,” was Jack’s verdict. “Incidentally, here comes our one true lone sea wolf.” He waved at a ship gliding into the harbour majestically. “What does she look like to you?”

Thomas sucked on his share of the ‘caulking’. “Like a ship.”

“I _knew_ you were going to say that. She’s the _Unhappy Walrus_ , under Captain Ginger Moustache.”

James was watching her too.

Thomas glanced heavenwards. “I _insist_ I should be-”

This time, the shouts originated in Miss Guthrie’s office, and had nothing to do with any wolves or walruses and everything to do with swine and simians: Mr. North and Mrs. West had got in through the open window - and never had they had a jollier time.

Eleanor was sporting angry scratches on both of her forearms and a sizeable pistol.

“I don’t know what’s got into them!” Thomas shielded them bodily as they hung from Eleanor’s ornate screen by their tails. “Truly, they are very sweet creatures and have never harmed a soul!”

“Clearly my furniture is soulless.” She did not lower her weapon. “Have you trained them to do that?”

A woman, especially with a grudge, could be a great deal more intimidating than any naval officer.

“No, I have not,” was his reply.

“ _Can_ they be trained?”

“Also, no, they are free spirits.”

She considered that. “How much?”

“Er.” Now she wanted to _buy_ them? “They aren’t for sale, Miss Guthrie. However,” he added confidentially, “they love nothing more than a ripe mango fruit, and their species is entirely matriarchal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the mystery of the stowaway monkey has finally been solved: they are the [white-ruffled lemurs](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/44/b5/78/hotel-la-petite-traversee.jpg), which has not been classified until 1758-ish. The Malagasy have many interesting beliefs about them, from what Google tells me, so it seemed to fit)) And yes the Mr. and Mrs. are vice versa bc yes.
> 
> I really wanted to post the actual reunion now too, but it's got too long for me to manage at once, so more time for everyone to make bets what happens first: James runs into Thomas running around the town or Thomas manages to find Miranda :D He can of course also wander into the jungle and spend five more years there :D
> 
> I had a brief glitch with the coat - they had no lapels then - so fixed it.


	6. Three Exiles From Eden (The Wrong James)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wheee, we're finally there!
> 
> Thomas vs. James & Miranda's Angst, Round One.

                                                                                                                        “ _Did you not see my love as he pass'd by you?_ __  
_His two flaming eyes, if he comes nigh you,_ __  
_They will scorch up your hearts: Ladies beware ye,_ __  
_Les he should dart a glance that may ensnare ye!_ ” _  
_                                                                                                                         — _Bess of Bedlam (the mad song)_

 

Hindsight asked, ‘Where is your horse?’

Behind me, answered Thomas the Trudger. Wearing my grandest wig and holding my signet ring between its big yellow teeth.

All his best ideas came to him mid some weary trudge or another.

He stopped trudging and let himself drop into the tall roadside grass, dearly hoping to find no snakes there. His boots were oppressing his spirits.

_“Billy can clean ’em.”_

_“Billy will_ not _be cleaning any more boots ever again.”_

_“Not even his boots? So lucky.” If Looks could teach, schoolmasters would far outnumber pupils. “Boots are just boots, Moondweller. Something for wear.”_

_“Oh, right, Ivola, this one goes onto my head and the other-”_

“Five minutes,” he solemnly swore, covering his face with his new hat, a touching gift from Anne. “Just five more minutes.” He blacked out on the spot, like a true mariner, his last thought being the fate of Eleanor’s ornate screen and who was going to pay for it.

What seemed like only a moment later, he heard:

“Sir? Sir, are you hurt?”

“Miranda?” Confused, he rubbed his eyes. “You’re not stealing my seeds again, are you?”

The sun was in a hurry to get down - in tropical regions, it had Miss Guthrie’s patience for long, meditative dusks.

The voice did not, in fact, remain inside Thomas’s head, which felt a lot more like lunacy than any one-sided dialogue had ever done.

There she was, driving a one-horse cart and looking like an early settler, but mostly wary and struck speechless.

He did not _just_ spring to his feet - he became the motion, its very essence. There was nothing else on his mind, no questions, no hesitation, no clever lines three years out of date.

Miranda, on the contrary, was as still as the water in the doldrums. “Thomas…” Spoken out loud, his name broke the spell: “Thomas!”

She met him halfway, not so much in an embrace as in a desperate collision, the two of them clinging to each other for dear life with a ruckus worthy of the monkeys. The horse neighed, out of general solidarity.

Thomas laughed, faint with joy and relief - just like on that beach at the Cape, his first landing. Miranda did not laugh, so he kissed her wet cheeks, her mouth, her forehead, her temples. She smelt of herbs and ash, without a whiff of her old perfume, and that settled it with the reality of this moment.

“I must say,” he uttered bashfully, “I have always pictured myself knocking on your door, all nonchalant-like, and _not_ lying around for you to collect me. But oh well. If things had deigned to go according to the plan, I might’ve suspected some foul play from the Fates.”

Miranda pulled away a little, glancing around but still holding onto his shoulders. “Are you alone?”

“Not since you came along.” He grinned at her lopsidedly. “Will you take me home now, dearest?”

“Oh Lord, Thomas!” Her fingers caught on his scar. “What _happened_ to you? And why are you dressed like this?”

Ha! He might have been a daylight robber! Stealing daylight from the Navy and giving it away like toughy. “I cut myself when shaving, thank you for asking. That was before… no, after I’d given up just about half my hair to make blankets for Bedlam’s fleas.” He adjusted his hat. “And let me tell you, they did _not_ appreciate the gesture. But the scar looks rather dashing, does it not?”

She tried and discarded several questions; he said no more, for no other reason than being too busy soaking her up.

He found new worry lines; her hair never used to be so tame, but what jarred him out of his blissful contemplation was the tiredness. It went beyond physical, a soul-deep fatigue, as if she were the one who had sailed to the wrong end of the world.

“Please,” he repeated gently. “Take me home, my dear.”

She grabbed his arm and all but hauled him bodily up into the cart.

 

* * *

 

“Does your horse have a name?”

“Patience-is-a-Virtue.” Ingenious, those Puritans. “‘Pattie’ for short.”

 

* * *

 

Miranda’s verandah rhymed and the trees around the house were whispering among themselves. In Thomas’s present frame of mind, he would have liked a hovel (though not without asking why on earth she would choose that), but this was not without its charm. The bunches of dried herbs scenting the air definitely wouldn’t be out of place in a witch’s abode.

“I do remember our James for an inveterate Spartan...” His feet took him to the bookshelves, and before he realised what he was doing, he had picked up _their_ book. “But our meditating Emperor should not have been the _only_ evidence of him around here.”

Miranda looked away. “He… comes back here. After his work is done.” She rustled off to put the water to boil.

“Let me help you!” He touched her shoulders as if to give back some of the strength that she had been lending him over the years. He had never fully realised how much before it had been too late. And now, she seemed to need it more than ever.

“I’m fine,” she lied. “Or I _will_ be after you finally explain yourself.”

He opened his sack. “Alright, then, first things first-”

“How _are_ you here?” she interrupted. “And where on earth is James?”

“Actually, I was waiting to hear the latter from you.”

So many new worry lines. “But if it wasn’t him, then did Peter…?”

“No!” The forcefulness of Thomas’s tone startled them both. “ _Peter’s_ main contribution to my escape was his utter, miserable _failure_ to bring me a blanket, and I will thank you not to look so incredulous. Indeed, I have rescued myself and joined a pirate crew, and this is a bona fide pirate’s coat.” He raised his chin proudly. “Which is to say, no, I would never blame you for allowing James to do the same.”

His guess was not _completely_ off the mark, but there was more to her furtive glances than the choice of a new profession. Sweet Lord, her posture! And if anything, his every word seemed to make things worse.

So he forced himself to keep quiet until they filled the bathtub.

“A mango seed,” this, he had to transfer into her custody before Mr. North and Mrs. West came for it again. “From a friend in Eden… that is, Bombay. We’ll wait for James before planting it, yes?”

“Is that the seed I was to steal from you?”

He chuckled. “Yes, but… well, in short, we have two monkeys on our ship. You have not seen the like because they are unique to Madagascar. And the other day, I dreamt you and James were tickling me, and it turned out to be _them_ trying to rob me. Does James…?”

“Steal seeds? No, I don’t believe so.” Could have been some valuable plants, like coffee! “Nor does he have any monkeys from Madagascar aboard.”

As Thomas lifted the hem of his shirt, Miranda swung away from him faster than he could say her name. She busied herself with throwing aromatic herbs into the water and testing the temperature, though not like he used to do back when the memories of Jeduthan had been too fresh.

“What do you imagine I have underneath, a letter of accusation, signed and sealed with a bloody flourish?” he asked her incredulously. “I _am_ sorry about the smell, though.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Thomas.” Her back shamed him into holding his tongue as she struggled to recompose herself. “But this is all too much for me to take in all at once.”

His shirt was sticky with sweat, so it took some effort to get out of it, without any help.

“Miranda, _look_ at me.” If her back had been bad enough, her red-rimmed eyes were infinitely worse. He turned around. “ _Look_ ! Yes, I haven’t got any younger, and yes, I could boast seven kinds of skin rashes, but for pity’s sake, I’m not some living illustration from an anti-Papist pamphlet! And even if I were, what kind of man would have come all this way to _lay blame_ at your door? Answer me!”

Hesitantly, she reached out for the bandage on his arm. “Alright, _now_ I believe you have become a pirate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Is that a _muscle_?”

“No, God help me, it’s a nerve!”

While most of Miranda was having a mental and spiritual convulsion, her hands knew their business, and Thomas couldn’t help stealing a kiss.

“So I’m not as ugly as sin, then?” he asked in the smallest of voices.

It was hard to say which of them was to blame, but in a heartbeat, they absolutely _lost_ it, laughing so hard that their ribs began to ache. At some point, Miranda did corral him into the tub, but that only made it easier for him to splash at her.

“I talked to you sometimes,” he confessed.

She sighed. “I talked to you too, darling.”

He perked up. “Did I talk back?”

Her frown convinced him to pretend that it had been a joke.

Just as he finally leaned back, she asked:

“What in heaven’s name is this?”

She was holding it up with such an obvious ‘we should burn it immediately’ look that the next thing he knew, he was hugging it protectively and dripping on her floor.

“ _This_ is my Blanket! The very thing that has actually saved me!”

She nodded in bewilderment. “... is it from the North Pole?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t you get a monkey from somewhere closer to home?”

“I am not talking to you anymore.”

“When you said ‘Bombay’, did you actually mean-”

One thousand and one nights would only just suffice to tell all the stories caught between them. Miranda washed Thomas’s hair, kissed the crown of his head and told him to save at least some of them for when James showed up.

“ _Do_ try and have some rest,” she added. “I’ll play you something soothing.”

Oh yes, he had been meaning to take a look at that clavichord, and humbly ask what black arts she had been using to keep it in tune!

“Rest in _bed_ , Thomas.”

“Well, at least not in peace? Sorry.” He paused in the doorway. “I forgot to ask… here I am, parading myself around without a fig leaf, and you might be expecting some guests over...”

She considered him, not without a glimmer of her former playfulness. “That would certainly cause a stir.”

She played Purcell’s ‘From silent shades’, a mad, dramatic piece, subtitled ‘Bess of Bedlam’ - which he used to hum at Elizabeth Ramsden back across the ocean.

“You are so, _so_ terrible, my Medea!” he informed her, laughing into his pillow.

Her music expressed what words could not, a heady roll of confusion, followed by a charged silence. He waited for her, but she moved like his side of the bed was a foreign territory. Maybe he should have chosen a poetic name that had not backfired on them.

“We are still… husband and wife, are we not?” He paused. “The way we promised to each other we would be, always?” He did not ask whether they were still kindred spirits because he could not conceive of _that_ being mutable.

She drew a shaky breath. “Of course we are.”

Without another word, he pulled her into his arms, and they curled up together, listening out for any signs of James’s approach. The bed was rocking to and fro like a hammock, the sea being ever so unwilling to relinquish its hold on him.

“Why on earth didn’t Peter bring you a blanket?”

“Miranda!”

“Sorry.”

 

* * *

 

The morning was filled with little things. A disjointed chorus of roosters in the distance. Miranda kissing Thomas awake. An extra-thin gruel without any sugar or butter but with a bunch of raisins. No weeding out the garden because god forbid the neighbours see him. Yes, Thomas, I have survived five years without any servants, thank you for asking. Yes, Thomas, soap is made from ash, remember Leviticus? (Peter would make a terrible soap). No, Thomas, I can iron my own laundry, please don’t touch it! What _do_ I feed Patience? I just don’t know.

He waited for Miranda to step outside and immediately crept over to the basket.

“I _told_ you I wouldn’t burn it!” he announced proudly, his arms full of carefully folded linen. “I- Oh, hello, James. I don’t suppose you can hold this, can you?” Imaginary people did have one crucial flaw. “That’s odd, you’re usually more talkative than that.” He made for the bedroom… and paused.

There are moments when Time forgets itself and pauses to watch and see what will happen next. Those are the moments that you can try and steal from it, if you dare.

Thomas’s knees went weak. His stomach was doing something rather more complicated, like splicing together a dozen different emotions. He looked at James like he had looked at New Providence, an island in a vast, uncaring sea… with a twisty moustache.

“Oh, James, I thought the day would never come!” He threw his arms around him, pressing him close.

“Ah, but how _do_ you know he is the real thing?” Another James was leaning against the table, right beside the Book. “You might have decided you needed two of us to cope with all this domesticity.”

Only one of you is such a sarcastic bastard, Thomas thought.

“He really _is_ here, James,” Miranda whispered, Thomas reaching out to her and drawing her into the embrace. “He is come back to us.”

James made a noise and finally brought up his arms, tentatively at first, but then with a ferocity that only pure elements could possess. Their first kiss had been just like this.

“The letter.” James pried himself away, a vein bulging on his forehead. It had not been there before, or at least, it had not been so pronounced. “We mourned you.”

“... excuse me?”

Miranda coughed. “James, _please_.”

“We _mourned_ you,” James repeated in accusation. “Peter wrote-”

“James!” Miranda snapped.

He really should have boarded the right ship. “When? When did that letter arrive?”

Winter, 1707, their second anniversary in exile. It would have taken a _much_ clearer head to outrace it. “Peter is a bloody traitor.”

James demanded an explanation, but before Thomas could give it, Miranda connected the dots: “No wonder he got the Carolinas! That filthy- I have no words!”

Thomas stared at her. “I... need to sit down for a while. With my blanket.”

He thought back to the day of his discharge, but whenever he focused on one detail, the others slipped away from him. His loves were talking among themselves, wondering about so many things.

“The Wrong Indies,” he replied. “That’s where I’ve been. I boarded an East Indiaman by mistake, went to India and, on my way back, got shipwrecked near St. Mary’s. That’s a nice curse, James, I have never heard it before. So, Madagascar is where my ship and crew are from. She is called the _Happy Pigs_.” Better leave the ordinal number for later. “I understand there is already a menagerie on the island, so she should fit right in.” Thomas opened _Meditations_ at random: _From the gods I received that I had good grandfathers, and parents…_ Right, thank you for that, Aurelius. “Does my father also believe me dead? What joy, I should have thought of that myself! I somehow doubt any of his spies would have survived this long without any real meat.”

“... 'Pigs'?” James echoed, looking at Miranda helplessly.

Thomas shrugged. “After Bedlam, I could’ve sailed to the Moon and back without noticing. Now _that_ would have been an adventure. Though some people seem to think I have escaped from there.”

Miranda closed the Book with a loud thud. “You told me you hadn’t seen James around! So how do you know what his ship is called?”

“I… do?” He glanced at James’s head. After weeks at sea, his hair was this strange greasy colour.

Thomas was _such_ an nincompoop.

“I think you broke them,” Sarcastic James remarked. “Or maybe they broke you.”

Nothing even remotely like a coherent exchange of information could be achieved. Miranda made tea. James drank brandy in greedy mouthfuls. Thomas toyed with James’s twisty moustache, James’s hand falling away from the scar on Thomas’s cheek. James had a matching tattoo, Miranda commented, but the mirth did not reach her eyes. Thomas left Bedlam’s architecture’s be, especially its crescent-shaped windows.

It was in the air, hanging thick like acrid smoke after an all-consuming fire. Miranda and her hundred silent ways of saying ‘James, no’. James was fiddling with his hands and shifting in his seat like he was about to storm out of the house, or perhaps ask _Thomas_ out.

“Enough!” Thomas erupted, jolting up. “I cannot ever apologise enough for the wreckage that my plans have caused you, nor for making you think I was dead for five long years.” He glared at them. “But I do not, and will not apologise for _being_ here right now or for breaking up your gloomy exile!”

“Christ, Thomas!” James went over to him, wide-eyed. “You think we don’t _want_ you here?”

“Yes!” He folded his arms across his chest, glancing at the panicked Miranda. “Or rather, I think you are ashamed of your life here and you don’t want me to see it! Well, too late, my loves, and you don’t daunt _me_. I have been a pirate captain myself!” For all of one minute, tops.

James’s face softened. “Thomas,” he swallowed heavily, “of all the things you must’ve heard about Captain Flint, has no one ever mentioned the _Maria Aleyne_?”

Miranda glared at him. “James, I forbid you!”

“I-” James’s voice broke- “I should be getting back to my ship.”

Miranda’s expression instantly changed back to panic: ‘Don’t leave me alone with him,’ as if Thomas were some kind of vengeful apparition.

He caught up with Captain Twisty Moustache outside, grabbing the horse’s reins without much ceremony, and the Captain’s thigh for good measure. “You _will_ quit this nonsense, and tell me what’s wrong this instant, or so help me, I’ll start singing ballads, one for each month in the madhouse!” He patted the horse apologetically.

“I should have bloody well rescued you,” James said under his breath, his head hanging low.

“Yes,” Thomas agreed, knowing what he did now. “But I have already had many an internal debate about it, and the general agreement is, Nassau is better than the noose you would’ve got if you’d failed.”

James’s head jerked up. “You might want to reconsider that.” Thomas blinked.

Miranda was on the porch, wrapped in a shawl, despite it still being afternoon.

“I killed your father,” James went on, meeting Thomas’s eyes. “Your father and his trollop and the whole fucking ship. He’d waited it out and then set off in disguise to visit his pet Judas.” He gritted his teeth. “I am _not_ sorry he’s dead.”

“If you must blame someone,” Miranda implored, “blame me. It was I who learnt of the Earl’s travel plans and talked James into the deed.”

Thomas had been praying to have Father out of his life for good, but this? This was monstrous. James nodded to himself, taking off at a gallop.

In his mind’s eye, Thomas could picture a damp, dark cargo hold, which was where the passengers would have fled. “Was it quick?”  he asked quietly.

Miranda said nothing.

“Did he suffer much? Was there a lot of blood?” Did he sneer even to his final breath?

“Or maybe he fucking grovelled,” said James’s voice in his head. “Maybe he went down to his knees and finally begged for forgiveness he never fucking deserved.”

Could _Thomas_ have done it? Would he have been there with James if he had arrived in time?

No, he wasn’t man enough. But Miranda was.

He reached out to her, not saying anything.

She squeezed his hand painfully. “We killed him, Thomas.” He had heard them the first time around “His blood is on our hands, and now we’ll _never_ be free of him.”

“Why? Because I’m a living reminder?”

She gasped as if struck.

Christ the Lord. Thomas cupped her cheeks. “Miranda. You _are_ free of him.” He kissed those hands, growing a garden and making soap out of burnt remains. “He will never hurt you again. You are good and strong and brave, and you are _not_ to blame. If James hadn’t killed the woman with him, God knows what her death would have been like.” He would never believe that Miranda, in her right mind, could have really condoned wholesale slaughter of innocents. “Do you believe me?”

She held his gaze, this time. “We need to find James, before he does something stupid.”

Because that was what she had been - the custodian of James’s wrath. And the thought of her bearing that burden made Thomas much, _much_ angrier than his father’s passing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What _will_ James do? Will he be the one to run away into the jungle for five years???


	7. The Right James

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and his Blanket vs. James's Angst, Rounds Two to ??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably warn you that _things_ finally happen. But that would be a spoiler :p

“ _I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna, are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love?...It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God...it torments sinners...Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret._ ”

— St. Isaac of Syria, _Ascetical Homilies 28, Page 141_

 

**_Thirteen years later (more or less)_ **

“Uncle Thomas, Uncle Thomas! Tell us a bedtime story!”

“Well.” Thomas smiled at a circle of children of all shapes, sizes and hair colours. “It all started with a blanket. Or rather, with our Uncle James’s chronic inability not to run away from it. Once upon a time, when I came back from a long voyage, he ran away into the forest and called out to the wild horses, donkeys and racoons to join his crusade against Fort Blanket-”

He felt Miranda’s hand on his arm, bringing him

**_Back to present_ **

With a: “Thomas? Can you hear that?”

 _That_ was a truest testament to James’s sterling character - never doing things by halves, and especially not when it came to doing something stupid.

There was a fight going on at Eleanor’s. Now, when you put together a tavern, a parcel of rogues and copious amounts of drink, the sum shouldn’t be difficult to work out, but this was going a passage to the Wrong Indies further than that. This was the work of a razor-sharp, artful and desperate mind.

Miranda’s hold on Thomas’s sleeve tightened. “You _mustn’t_ go in there. It’s sheer ma-”

“-madness?”

“ _Mayhem_.”

He met her eyes. “I can deal with a little mayhem.” His imaginary James begged to differ - and reason and treason really did not have enough letters between them. “Stay in the cart, will you? And at the first sign of danger-”

Miranda tied the horse and followed him, daring him to finish that sentence. He dared not. With a measure of relief, he spied Billy and Jack in a pool of torchlight, conspiring with an older man who had a walrus-like moustache ( _oh_ ) and a head as shiny as an egg.

“Mr. Goodhope! There you are!” Jack waved him over. “I’m afraid our women are having a time of their lives.” He noticed Miranda. “I meant our crews, ma’am.”

“Mrs. Barlow.” Mr. Walrus Moustache nodded at her courteously. “Three guesses as to who started it?”

His inquisitive look almost made Thomas blurt out, ‘Not I, sir!’

“Half my crew are women,” Thomas explained to Miranda in a hurry. “And no, they aren’t always the voice of reason. Quick introductions! Everyone, name yourselves and your ship!”

With the battle cry of ‘Good Hope, the Pigs!’ and a hasty whispered instruction, he stole past Billy into the tavern. After this was all over, he would be on his best behaviour for the next decade. Well, more than ten days, at any rate.

The Lady of the Key Ring was nowhere to be seen. Thomas caught sight of Anne’s hat and used it to orient himself, even as she tripped up an unfamiliar fellow, sending him crashing right towards Ivola’s waiting chair. Skyla was close by, either watching Ivola’s back or simply kicking a known wolf-whistler in the nethers. The Walruses, from what Thomas could tell, had barricaded themselves in not one but two separate corners. Mr. North and Mrs. West’s racket had _nothing_ on this, and ironically, they were the only ones who were yet to contribute to it.

He coughed, wishing for a trumpet. “Captain Flint!” A trumpet or Halsey’s voice.

Instead, he fired his pistol.

In the ensuing lull, the first thing that he heard was: “That’s my roof, you lunatic pig!” She materialised on the stairs with a wild look that threatened to spill over into panic.

Thomas did not think that they ought to know what _her_ panic was like. “A good roof is important, so I am happy for you, Miss Guthrie, but there’s a fire in the harbour-” Outside, Billy waved the torch to and fro- “And it seems to be one of our ships, but I couldn’t tell which.”

This deep in cups and fists, his words, paired with a smell of smoke, sufficed for the primordial fear to set in. The three crews stampeded out, without trampling over one another… too much. Well, that could have gone better.

“Monkey shit.” Eleanor took a long swig of something alcoholic, calming herself down. “Not a single fucking chair left intact.” So… the largest tab ever run up in Nassau, then? “One day on my island, and you’ve turned my best captain into a pig like you!”

“It is a... gift.” He paused. “What makes you think it was my doing, though?”

“She’s just called you a _lunatic pig_ ,” James forced out, pained - by Thomas’s presence, or, most likely, by Vane’s vice-like grip. “And he-”

“Yes, my dear, I am officially a Lunatick and a Pig. Could you… two men of brawn please let each other go now? On the count of three. Charles, _do_ lower that knife, cheating in a bad fight does not make a legend.”

“You mean a ‘bar’ fight?” Charles asked as Thomas managed to pry them apart.

“It may have begun as such, but now it’s plain terrible.” It was the ‘Charles’ that had finally done it, Thomas suspected, stupefying James beyond physical resistance. Thomas turned to Eleanor. “And I _am_ awfully sorry about the roof.”

“You owe me…” She named twice the actual damages. “And a fucking good explanation.”

Nursing his own grievances, Vane stole Eleanor’s drink before exclaiming:

“You fucking liar!” He sounded ridiculously scandalised, if ‘scandalised’ could mean ‘on the verge of murder’. “You said you never had a clue who the devil Flint was!”

Ah. “Indeed I had none - until today.”

Charles... believed him. “So let me get this straight… You’ve sailed to the Wrong Indies for _that_?” His messy mane jerked in James’s general direction. “You poor bastard.”

Eleanor wrestled back the drink. “In what world does _Charles_ know more than the civilised people in here?”

“Yeah, who’s that, honey? Ow!”

Thomas interposed himself between them before they could start _another_ brawl - unfortunately, letting go of James for a moment. As Miranda, the Blanket and the sane(r) men edged in, he discovered that the actual mastermind had already fled the scene.

“All explanations later!” He paused only to add: “I am _not_ a punching man, Charles Vanes, but James’s hair is _red_ and _beautiful_ , and you will do well to remember that.”

On his way, he snatched a jug of water and stopped it up with his sash. Climbing out after James _might_ have gone easier with a second pair of arms.

“Pigs.” His audience was dark and stormy and would not peel himself off the wall. “‘ _Charles_ ’.”

Ah, which issue to address first, the true dilemma. “I first met him near Barbados. It’s a long story, and an even longer prize-taking experience. I never realised just how _slow_ things could get when you’re trying to rob someone. You always picture a pirate attack as a sudden gale, swift and perfectly timed, not as a slog through the maze of sacks and crates.”

Forever ago, he had been delighted to learn James’s unique aptitude for communicating surprise, bewilderment or disbelief without a word. No one before or after him could do it half so expressively. But what Thomas was witnessing right now was a conquest by an allied force of the whole three emotions.

“It’s all true, then,” James breathed out at length. “You’ve escaped from Bedlam, gone to India and Madagascar, found yourself the oddest fucking pirate crew to sail the seven seas and still somehow came here, duelling Charles Fucking Vane along the way like nobody’s business.”

“Hold on, I haven’t said anything about the duel!”

An understanding began to dawn: James must have simply wanted to get as drunk as a lord, but then, say, Jack had decided to relate some of their adventures too loudly for James to ignore.

Thomas touched his love’s shoulder hesitantly. “And you are celebrating my glorious arrival in style. May I wash your face now? No?” He untied his blanket from around his shoulders and trailed after James with it and the water at the ready. “Why not?”

“ _Pigs_ , Thomas.”

“ _Homer_ , James. Brush up on your Greek. Also, your Quartermaster is an actual walrus, so there.”

“You have got to be _kidding_ me.”

“That’s the usual reaction to my adventures of the last three years, yes. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had help from the most unexpected sources, and Miranda may or may not have charmed me against permanent bodily harm.” It was only a shame that she had forgotten about his hair. But then again, his heels were doing well.

James walked on, less like a trudger and more like a man stumbling through a nonsensical dream. Madagascar had been the same, at least at first - trying to find some meaning, familiar reference point or a guiding star amidst being pelted with coconuts.

The waves were a curious pack of black dogs, watching James as he fumbled with his tinderbox.

“Is your Quartermaster a reliable man, though?” Thomas asked.

“He doesn’t think he’s a walrus.”

“That’s a pity, but I have left Miranda with him, Billy and Jack, so I was wondering if that is… fine by you?”

James paused, still keeping Thomas at an arm’s length. “Who the fuck are Billy and Jack?”

“Er. Right. Billy is a lad we rescued from the Navy. Jack, I am not entirely clear on what his job is, besides running errands like a clerk, but he sails with Vane. He also happens to read Descartes and _understand_ some of it.”

Poor, poor James.

“Do you know what I find the most amazing about flint?” Thomas covered those restless hands with his. “It can start fires even soaked in seawater. _Breathe_ , James. It’s alright.”

Between the two of them, they miraculously managed a very small fire, crackling and suspiciously well-behaved. The night was warm and close to the skin, ideal for a swim - if you weren’t afraid of going in after dark.

“I have already been through this with Miranda,” Thomas said with a sigh at the rigid line of James’s back. “And truth be told, either of you averting your eyes hurts me much more than anything that may or may not have left a mark on my body.”

James did look at him then, and for all that it was dark, Thomas saw that his hope had not been mad at all - James was tormented by love, not by its absence.

The sea had been many things to them, as cliched as that may sound. But tonight, nearing the end of Thomas’s voyage, it became a balm. James walked out of the water, caught between a vision from a myth and a lonely, wounded man. Thomas wrapped the Blanket around him, which was neither the first nor the last job that it had to do.

James’s nose wasn’t broken, and the haze of rum had finally lifted. Thomas pressed their foreheads together, not asking anything of either of them. He had been so angry for Miranda’s sake, but he couldn’t hold onto that anger in the face of James’s agony.

“What the _everloving_ fuck, Thomas?” James finally erupted. “Coming back is one thing, but no, you have to destroy everything I have built here!”

“What, Eleanor’s furniture and your grudge match with Vane? How _dare_ I indeed. No wonder Miranda won’t even call the house _your_ home - James doesn’t live there! James is too busy playing the tragic hero of his story!”

James’s glare could have scorched him. “Still so bloody naive! What do you think is going to happen tomorrow?”

“Let’s see… a monstrous tab, a bit of gossip, and everyone will happily move on?”

“My men-!”

“If your men vote you out on account of you having a madman and a Pig for a lover, then I’m sorry to say, you have been sailing with the wrong people.”

Never mind that they were in the middle of a foolish spat, Thomas was grinning wildly. Because this? This was real. This was the right James, the only one, the _utter_ precious, red-headed ninny.

James drew the Blanket tighter around himself. “ _Thomas_ ,” his voice was hoarse from a long tirade about fear and respect that Thomas had completely tuned out. “Do you even _understand_ why I did it?”

“Um, you’ll have to be a bit more specific than that… Oh. Uh.” He moved to sit beside James, their shoulders touching under the protective cover. “You were angry. And when you get angry, terrible things happen. But from what I have read, Norse berserkers were feared and respected for it. I don’t believe in Hell, James, nor in forgiveness as an escape from it. Forgiveness is about peace, with yourself and with other people. So while I shall never make peace with murder, I cannot and will not blame you for being _you_ either.” He would just have to learn to guide James and others towards their better natures and away from the bloody tributes that the world demanded from them.

“No!” James broke free, reaching for his shirt and jumping to his feet. “You’re wrong. You’ve got it all backwards. Rage is pure and cleansing, and be it hot or icy cold, it knows no victims or villains. _Of course_ you would embrace it.” He knelt before Thomas and cupped the back of his neck none too gently. “But when I did it what I did, I was _beyond_ rage. I was in Hell because I felt _nothing_. No rage, no satisfaction, no remorse. I killed him because there was no _you_ anymore. No love, no kindness, no more forgiveness left in the world. _He_ killed it all first. After that, what crime could be big enough?”

He stared James in dawning horror. “How could you say that?” Did Miranda feel this way too? Was that why she… God! “There is _always_ kindness, James! Always. Kindness and forgiveness, for those who seek it! You shouldn’t need me or anyone else to see that!”

James’s mouth twisted in a humourless smile. “Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I did. You are the brightest man I’ve ever known, and yet, you never realised you were the light of our lives. Without you, there could only be darkness.”

Dear God, was he too late? The right words had never been harder to find. “James, I love you no matter if you’re a good man, a villain or what not. But there _is_ light and love and joy in you independently from me. Your fight, it doesn’t _have_ to be so destructive! You can keep fighting to build a better place!”

“All this time,” James marvelled. “All these things that happened to us. The things we did. And you still believe it’s worth it?”

“Yes!” He clutched at James’s shoulder. “Back in London, I was a child, a fool, building castles in the sky. But now, I can see things more clearly - and there is too much cruelty, too much suffering around us to add to it. If we must be violent, if we must shed blood or stand by while it happens, let there be a line. And let there be a nobler purpose, but _not_ at the expense of our present happiness. Here, in this place, we can have everything we dare dream of. Do you believe me, James?”

“‘We’?” James echoed, barely a whisper.

“Yes, _we_. You, Miranda and I as one, like we were always meant to be. If I can sacrifice my naivety, then you can damn well temper your guilt.”

He paused to catch his breath, and the next thing he knew, James was surging towards him, crashing their mouths together. It was like the first drop of water after an endless journey through the dunes. Thomas gave himself over to it, as if it could cure them of all their hurts at once.

But when it threatened to land them on the sand, he planted his hands against James’s chest, gently but firmly. “Not like this. After all my privations, I daresay I deserve a bed.” James’s ghost of a smile flickered in and out.

“Christ, Thomas, you are impossible!”

“Thank you, I endeavor to grow a little more impossible each day.” The truth was, and it came to him as he rubbed a soothing circle into James’s back, there was one final stretch to brave. “All that anguish, James. All that hurt. Never seeing you again, never a goodbye. And your guilt, I have felt it too. It’s alright now. You can let go. You can return it to the sea.”

A badly healed break needed to be re-broken to heal. James had not even got that far, walking around with a gaping wound. He curled up with his head on Thomas’s lap, letting Thomas hold him through his animalistic howls. And if James had suffered so, then what _he_ had been lugging around from Indies to Indies?

“Forgive me,” he whispered, the surf splashing against his words. “Forgive me for what my father and I have done to you.”

James sat up in a jolt. “You are _never_ to blame yourself, Thomas! Do you hear me? _Never_!”

Thomas cupped his cheek. “Thank you for that, my love.” He smiled. “I shall hold you to it the next time you disapprove of my new friends.”

And now, Homecoming Attempt Number Two.

 

* * *

 

By choice, Thomas had been chaste exactly once in his life - when choosing to focus on his work instead of wooing the breathtaking red-haired lieutenant in front of him. Because otherwise, they would never have got any work done.

In hindsight, that might not have been the worst case scenario.

“The house feels so strange without her,” James murmured.

Now that was a fine way to set the mood. “At least you know where she keeps her teacups.”

“Of course I do!” James huffed. “You think I don’t _want_ to have a proper home?”

Thomas’s smile softened. “I think you are the most beautiful man alive, and I am running out of clever things to say.” Five years ago, he had taken James and Miranda’s by the hand and led the way, but now… well.

They had left Miranda in a good company, though. Or rather, they had scouted things out from a safe distance while Ivola had been talking pig business at her.

Five years, Thomas had to accept, had turned him and James into strangers. But on the bright side - always a bright side - it was a second chance at not causing a wreckage.

“Look at us.” He kissed the nape of James’s neck. “As bashful as a pair of maidens. Not _real_ maidens, mind you, but those from the awful novels.”

James snorted. “What was it called, again? _L’Eschole des Femmes?_ ”

Thomas shuddered. “Don’t remind me! Or I _will_ quote it at you, Captain Twisty Moustache!”

James turned around, flashing him a haughty, challenging look. “Try me, Mr.... Goodhope, was it?”

Thomas glanced at their coats, hanging from the chair side by side. Well, nobody had to know...

“Oh sir!” he gasped, feeling up James’s chest. “Are _all_ pirates as well-formed as you are? You make me shudder - indeed, sir, you make me shudder and fall into a dead swoon. A dead swoon, sir!”

Wordlessly, James picked him up and carried him off into the bedroom.

The bed was just as soft as he had left it. His lips met James’s and their hands soon followed, trying to cover as much ground as was humanly possible. Learning James’s body anew was going to be another odyssey, one he gladly embarked upon.

James pulled him on top of himself with a silent plea in his wide, sea-blessed eyes. Without pausing to think, Thomas reached for the bedside table and his fingers closed around what he had been looking for. He and Miranda were going to have _so_ many words about this.

“Thomas, no, we don’t need that!”

His hand jerked, spilling oil on the newly-laundered sheets. Uh-oh. “Hush, James. No more sabotage attempts on my watch.” He slid down to kiss the perfect curve of James’s thigh.

James made a strangled noise. “Sorry, but I cannot for the life of me imagine _you_ keeping wa-” Thomas cut him off.

Unable to bark out orders as he may be, let alone in bed, this new Thomas was no stranger to challenges and setbacks.

James put him to test every step of the way, and the moment they were fully joined, James’s body locked up around him.

Thomas whispered his name, touching their foreheads together. “I will _not_ disappear if you let go, I promise.”

After a skipped beat, James’s eyes fell closed and he arched up, letting Thomas move. How sweet and foolish their London days had been, for all of Miranda’s dirty cues in their ears. Their each and every time together had been a first.

This was the first time Thomas wasn’t sweet with James, rocking into him hard and fast instead, spurred on by their drumming heartbeats and frantic breath. Their broken moans fit together to make an imperfect mosaic of a perfect union. James caught his hand, clenching their fingers into a fist as they finally found their release.

They couldn't possibly have lasted, but by god, Thomas had lost track of his toes for a moment. He felt alive and cleansed in a way that had eluded him for far, far too long.

“Fuck,” James breathed out, flushed to the roots of his hair, his chest heaving, “how long…?”

“ _Five_ years, James. Not counting my fellow lunatics, pirates and, oh, a Malagasy king.”

James raised his eyebrows. “Just one? And where was the queen?”

The heat suffusing James’s skin sank into him, becoming his own. His mouth covered a honeyed cloud of freckles on James’s shoulder, tasted the ink of his tattoo, skimmed over a scar. So many discoveries, old and new.

James flipped them over, straddling Thomas’s hips and kissing his scar, that ginger moustache tickling Thomas’s face. “I should never have doubted you, Thomas.”

Thomas was stroking James’s hips. “Don’t doubt me now, and we shall be fine. We shall be happy again.”

“ _I hear you say – ‘How unlucky that this should happen to me',_ ” James recited, leaning back and offering Thomas a full view of himself, Thomas’s fingers trailing down his chest. “ _But not at all._ ” They gasped in unison. “ _Perhaps say instead how lucky I am that I am not broken by what has happened, and I am not afraid of what is about to happen._ ”

Yes, Thomas’s hands and mouth told him, don’t be afraid. “ _For the same blow might have stricken any one, but not many who would have absorbed it without capitulation and complaint_.”

Capitulations and complaints of the past shall have no hold over their present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _L’Eschole des Femmes_ \- yes, with this weird spelling based on a real ye olde porn book (porn before the term 'porn' existed in the modern sense!) - is not a real book. It's more of an idea of the Ultimate 18th Century 50 Shades. As to Thomas's babbling, he just... babbles.
> 
> The quote at the end is meant to be Miranda being present even when she's absent))
> 
> My headcanon for Mr. Gates is that he's been bald since his twenties, so the age diff is shown by a BUSHIER moustache :D
> 
> This chapter kicked my ass a LOT.


	8. Thus Spoke Minerva (Mamy Ny Aina)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some loose ends and knots are tied, and some chains are finally cast off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeere we go, the final chapter! 
> 
> I _tried_ not to forget anyone, but I'm a scatterbrain too, so. [This](http://www.sea-thieves.com/education_pages/education_photos/clothing_02.gif) is finally what Thomas's coat looks like, and [this](https://eventsbybenita.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/knot-truelovers.jpg) will be relevant as you read on. "Mamy ny aina" = "life is sweet" in Malagasy.
> 
> Random [great Mr. Gates art](http://angiesg.deviantart.com/art/Hal-Gates-451360735).
> 
> The epigraph was pointed out to me by Cynthia, and I couldn't _not_ use the Monkey thing, Dr_Doomsduck :D

“ _Don’t let the future trouble you. For you will come upon such things, if you must, with that same skill of reason with which you now assail the present_.”

— Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_

 

Thomas was on his feet before he knew where the loud banging noise had come from, trying to tug on his breeches and remember where he had last seen his pistol in the space of the same breath (he failed).

 _It’s dangerous to go out there with just an imaginary friend to watch your back,_ Halsey had told him sagely. _Here, take his._ The weapon could not have possibly been there during his embrace with Miranda, because, he was fairly certain, a thing like that would dampen even the most passionate reunion.

So it must have run away to join the imaginary snakes in the grass.

There had been another, the one that he had fired at Miss Guthrie’s. Fare thee well, Two Worthies, fare thee well. His wigs used to pull those very same tricks on him, and truly, he had not changed all that much.

In the kitchen, James’s awkward little grimace turned to amusement. “Sheathe your blade, Sir Noble Pirate. We aren’t under attack… yet.” He paused. “Hold on, isn’t that-?”

“-your knife? Aye, it is.” And he couldn’t believe James had distracted him from such an obvious innuendo. He found a vastly superior occupation for his hands, involving James’s person. “I thought Miranda’s cauldrons were at large and demanding their due.”

James attempted a smile. “I’m afraid this battle goes to them.” It was a work in progress, bittersweet and filling Thomas’s heart with joy and sorrow hand in hand.

Thomas planted a kiss on his lover’s cheekbone. “It’s of no consequence whatsoever.”

A longer pause, for James to make himself look busier than a cook at Versailles. “It’s not because I _can’t_ cook, Thomas.”

He clasped his arms around James’s waist. “Just as you say, _mon amour_.”

“It’s because there is nothing _to_ cook.”

“Have you tried your belt?”

James cast a sidelong glance at him. “You _have_ been through a lot, haven’t you?”

Thomas chuckled. “You know, once upon a time…” Bad memory. Terrible, really. He leaned their heads together. “... I was terribly naughty, and I was told that if I didn’t mend my ways, I would be sent to the Navy.” He could practically _feel_ the force of James’s indignant eyeroll. “Yes, yes, many things aren’t supposed to happen to the eldest son, but my point is, in hindsight, I _might_ have survived the experience.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” James countered firmly.

Thomas sighed.

James changed the subject: “Have we, by any chance, driven Miranda out of her own house?”

“Yes, we have, and let it be the first and the _last_ time.”

On that, they were in complete accord without any lengthy arguments. The joint search of the cupboards turned up some bits and pieces, but it would take Nosy Baravan to magic them into a stew. In England, everything was meat or pudding. Thomas had come to think in stews.

“We could pick some fruit along the way,” James suggested, pulling away so that they could get dressed. He still dared not to _initiate_ any intimacies, but at least he was past the point of running away into the woods.

“Have you done that before? That is, here, specifically?” Thomas could not but remember his own many and varied kinds of fruitsickness back on St. Mary’s.

Not all that is forbidden fruit is worth the knowledge acquired in the process.

“ _Five_ years on this island, Thomas. Or, if you actually do the math, four years and-“

“Oh hush, Captain Pernickety!” Five was a nice round number. “However you put it, it’s time enough to gnaw on every leaf and prickly plant.”

“Thomas!”

“What, you didn’t remember me for such a bloody nuisance?” Thomas batted his eyelids at him innocently. “Am I not living up to the angelic image?”

James stalked up to him, crowding him into the wall and staring at him in a sort of an aggravated wonder. Thomas returned it in full, and in nary a heartbeat, James was kissing him senseless, his mouth greedy and his hands greedier still. Laying siege to what some might call Thomas’s immortal soul, but he wouldn’t worry about that too much, and besides, the gates were wide open.

James’s stomach growled.

Thomas snickered into James’s moustache. “When did you last eat, my bellicose eremite? No, wait, an _anchorite_ !” James’s memory failed him. “Goodness gracious, where _do_ you find the strength to move?”

His love was incredible. Simply incredible.

“Where do _you_?” was the riposte.

Touche.

They sped through the morning rituals that, sadly, required some discipline, every now and then. James, sounding _so_ much like his imagined version, declared:

“No, that won’t do at all. Take it off.”

“So eager to divest me again?” Thomas teased. “What of the raging beast of your belly?”

“The _raging beast_ is grievously offended by your shirt, sir.”

“Beg your pardon?”

James caught Thomas’s arms and lifted them up, peeling off the offending article. “‘Goodhope’.” A dark burgundy shirt was installed in the office, with a strategic touch here and there. He should have known that, of all things, _fashion_ would be the key. “Does the name come from the Cape, or is it merely a coincidence?”

Thomas smiled. “It does. Cape Good Hope was… well, someday soon I shall be able to put it into words. But for now, suffice to say, I appreciate all the multiple meanings.”

James mirrored his smile. “It’s a good choice. Would you like to know where mine comes from?”

“Do you have to ask?”

Flint was a ghost, born of the sea and destined to return there after his bloody work was done. Or at least, that had been the case until Thomas had barged in on him and mistaken him for the entirety of the new James.

Thomas… was having some trouble wrapping his mind around that. “But James… if Flint _were_ an entity apart from your truest self, then why was your first instinctive response such profound guilt? For surely if Flint had nothing to do with who you are, you could discard him like a coat, blaming all your crimes on him?”

“That _was_ the idea,” James replied quietly. “But now you have mixed it all up.”

“Oh, I see! Captain Flint is your Blanket!”

James stormed out of the room in a huff.

“Your murderous Blanket with a twist to his moustache!”

Only to return with a new coat of a matching colour to the shirt - not exactly a perfect fit for Thomas’s frame, but bringing a proud twinkle to James’s eyes.

Thomas had never stood a chance. “The hat was a gift!” He held it out of James’s reach protectively.

“But it does not _suit_ you!” James fumed. “And your hands!”

He tensed. “What about them?”

James inspected them critically before brushing his lips over the knuckles with a note of reverence that robbed Thomas of speech. “Miranda has your signet ring if you want it.” Let Pattie have it! “But really, Thomas, not a _single_ piece of jewelry.”

“James, you are the most ridiculous man in the West Indies, I’ll have you know.”

“ _I_ won’t have my lover,” and Thomas’s heart leapt wildly at hearing James say the word, “walking around dressed like a beggar.” With that, he pried a ring off his own little finger and put it on Thomas’s with a finality that barred all argument and overpowered all doom. “There. Until you get yourself properly decked out.”

“You know,” Imagined James commented, even as the other James unfolded a wine-dark scarf from his endless treasure trove. “One might construe that as a proposal.”

 _That_ would be too much for poor Thomas, after the past two days and one night. “Is that a scarf?”

“Not quite.” James reached out, tying the thing around Thomas’s head. “You can take your hat too, of course, and the blankets you need. Just _please_ don’t wear them.”

“Why, thank you, Cap’n, very gracious of you.” He fiddled with James’s earring. “Who pierced your ear? Was it Miranda?” It would be nice to wear the other of the pair, if James still had it.

James gave him a Look, of the variety that spelt that Thomas and Thomas alone could take that tone with him and get away with it. “I am a very gracious man, Mr. Wrong Indies.” No comments on the earring. “Dear God, have you lost _all_ your weapons?”

“Intimidation does have its limits - it does not work on the trees.” He had had the last love bite, trails of them covering James’s thighs _and_ neck. So there.

 

* * *

 

Guavas were the easiest picking: they simply had to be yellow or greenish and give to slight pressure.

They broke their fast on the pink, succulent pulp.

“I _was_ going to rescue you,” James uttered fiercely. “Once I had the loyalty of my men. And then…”

“And then the Letter happened.” In a while - a week, perhaps - he and James and Miranda would have to sit down and have a real conversation about it. But not sooner. “You’ve got a bit of guava on your moustache, my dear.”

 

* * *

 

Contrary to their enticing name, sugar apples were scaly and vaguely suspicious-looking, and Thomas was _not_ to try any more unripe fruit.

“I have to ask… _how_ do you sail to the Wrong Indies?”

“The ship was called the _James_ , if you must know!” Thomas should have just told them that it had all been according to the plan! “God, James, stop that! You’d think I have kicked you!”

“You come out of battle with a Navy ship with a mere scratch and acquire a deep scar _shaving_ \- Thomas, you are indeed too dangerous to be at large.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Do not for a _moment_ think that I am done being too dangerous _or_ at large.”

It was James’s turn to sigh, like he was dearly missing Miranda. “What happened to the razor?”

“I have not lost it,” he replied with great dignity.

 

* * *

 

Both guineps and sea grapes grew in bunches, but Thomas was expected to tell them apart at a quick glance. Whatever he was having, it tasted pleasantly tangy and was orange on the inside.

“ _Why_ ‘Pigs’?”

“I cannot believe we are still on this subject, Walrus.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever think it was all God’s punishment?”

“James… we, human beings, were created in His image, but I have always fancied that His image wasn’t so alike with my father’s. But it’s crass to speak ill of the dead, so let us move on.”

“Ever the Panglossian.”

“Always so Hobbesian. You leave me no choice but to tip the scales back into balance.” With Miranda holding those scales and needing to rest her arms.

 

* * *

 

Curiously enough, New Providence did not seem to be all that rich in coconuts. Thomas spied a tiny patch of cultivated watermelons, which led to his first Serious Moral Dilemma of the local flavour.

James was far less conflicted: “I’ll get them, you keep watch.”

“But-”

James eyed him keenly. “What if I were to tell you that they belong to one of those Puritan shrews, ceaselessly spying on Miranda and making her life a misery?”

“Would you be telling the truth? Oh, go on then, and get them all!” Were they pirates or were they mere dressing-chest raiders?

 

* * *

 

Thomas couldn’t honestly say that he was any less ravenous after their extended raid, but they were certainly moving in the right direction.

“If I was willing to risk everything for the sake of some pirates I have never met,” he was saying as they rode into town, heavily laden with watermelons, “why on earth would you expect me to reject you now?” He rested his chin on James’s shoulder.

“Because _now_ you know what pirates are actually like!”

“I agree, it’s easy to forgive that which you have not known yourself.“ He _should_ have insisted on going to Nassau with James back in 1705. Together, they could have sorted things out between the pirates and the former governor, rescuing the man’s family. “But the world cannot be changed by the willfully blind. Thus, I have learnt that pirates come in four varieties instead of one.” James’s back was awfully interested to hear it. “The Fiend, The Noble, the Fool and the She-Pirate, or shall I say, the Woman at Large.”

James, to his credit, recognised a joke when he heard one. “Which of those am I, pray tell?”

“Why, the Woman at Large, of course! On account of your carefully concealed but undying devotion to domesticity.”

“Homemaking isn’t always a woman’s business, though.”

“Ah, how he spurns the honour! So you admit you should not have stranded Miranda all on her own like you did?”

“And what would you have me do? Take her _sailing_ with me?”

Thomas shuddered. Nobody should be forced to sail beyond their natural capacity for it, nor exposed to the risks. “Bedlam if I know.”

His version of ‘hell’ passed without a comment. “And yet, you never tried looking for us in Paris.”

He may be a fool, but he did know his loves too well.

After a pause, James inquired in a fastidiously casual tone, “And your new best mate Vane?”

“Now _that_ is a challenge. No, truly, it is. If you call a man a fiend and consider yourself done with him, you deny him the chance to be something different.”

“Yes, well, some people deserve it.”

“No doubt about it.”

“You can’t _redeem_ someone like Vane or his old clique. They would spit in your face and then keelhaul you for your troubles. You can’t go around handing out blankets and second chances to people who don’t want them!”

At that point, they had to stop the horse, Thomas dismounting all the better to see James. “My love, I _understand_ that. It is as I told you yesterday: kindness and peace for those who seek it and those who can accept it, if not without an inner struggle. It cannot be forced. But since you have brought up Vane, if he is what you say he is, why has he stayed instead of leaving with Teach? Why not be where all the fiends are?”

“Eleanor,” was the immediate reply. “And just because Teach isn’t here doesn’t mean all the fiends are gone.”

“So a fiend’s apprentice can be enchanted by a woman?”

James rolled his eyes. “It has happened before. My point is, we wanted to redeem Nassau without knowing her, and we failed. Eleanor _is_ Nassau. The rest are just murderers, liars and thieves clogging the harbour. This is no place for you or Miranda.”

“Now that’s a grim perspective.” Thomas was peering ahead of them: so much work to do. So much work to _undo_. “Take it from me, this town’s two greatest failings are the lack of proper sanitation and the criminal absence of a good leg of mutton.” He took the reins. “I have been meaning to ask-”

“Her name is Jezebel.”

Patience and Jezebel - it sounded perfect. “Mine _must_ be Homer.”

 

* * *

 

Most of the debris seemed to have been cleared away overnight, but the tavern’s doors were closed. They continued down to the beach, identifying the Pig Encampment effortlessly by a) Halsey’s singing and b) the unmistakable smell of Nosy Baravan’s trademark everything stew.

“Is there a story behind it?” James whispered.

“The stew or the missing nose? _Some_ would tell you that one day, when all the leather and the ship worms had run out…”

James eyed him appreciatively. “You should meet Randall. That’s our bosun, but he knows more horror stories about cookery than even Mr. Gates, whose moustache has so impressed you.”

“Lovely, that’s whole two non-fiends right there.”

“You must have missed Randall in the fight.”

Mr. North and Mrs. West sat at Miranda’s feet, sniffing at the stew and clamouring for fruit.

“What, already?” She asked in great surprise. If she had had a sleepless night as well, she did not let it show. “I was so certain you wouldn’t get out of bed for a week, at least.”

The Dreaded Pirate Captain Flint did not blush precisely the same shade of red as before, but it was still very fetching.

“You haven’t left us any food, dearest,” Thomas informed her in an undertone. “Just a lot of oil, which I definitely have not spilt over… anything.”

“You did insist no laundry shall daunt you.” Her wry smile was directed at James. “No food and a lot of oil is what happens when _someone_ loses his shopping list and then comes back to sleep like a log.”

“I haven’t _lost_ it,” James protested. “I… things came up.” He glanced around to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping on their highly illuminating conversation.

“They always do, don’t they?” Miranda said sweetly. “Stew? You’ll have to fetch it yourself, though.”

“Have you seen Mr. Gates around?”

“That depends. Are you feeling noble enough to face the Guthrie girl in his stead?”

“Have you seen my pistol, dearest?” Thomas butted in, latching onto James lest he decide to be noble.

“Yes, I believe it has been… confiscated to cover some of your tab.”

“Oh.”

James sat down with his bowl, wolfing down the contents without a spoon and pausing only to take a hasty bite of the cassava bread. Thomas planted himself between his loves, placing his gift hat on Miranda’s head, over her cap. Now all three of them were pirates.

He whispered nonsensically, “Miranda, do you like our monkeys? They are called the _varikandra_ in Malagasy, and no European has ever classified them.”

“Do I have a choice?”

As if on cue, Mr. North and Mrs. West raised their heads, watching them in return. James shifted a little away.

Well, he had no choice either. “Have you met my crew?” Thomas went on. “Lovely, aren’t they? James is _not_ to steal a single Pig, but we may steal him.”

“They are very… fit to sail with you, I’ll grant them.”

“So you approve!”

James snorted. “Trust it to you to round up the rejects from every ship in _the Wrong Indies_.”

“Ah, but _some_ rejects are you and I.”

Miranda hushed them, gesturing towards the arbitrary centre of the camp. A sense of expectancy stole over it, travelling from tent to tent, until the general racket fully died down. The monkeys crept over to investigate.

Finally, the cause was revealed: Skyla marched out of the trees, armed with a red bundle nearly half her height.

“We do like the colour,” Thomas commented.

“We have noticed,” was James’s reply.

Miranda pinched James’s cheek. “Red is better than black.”

“That’s _not_ what you said the last time you burnt my shirt.”

“The cheek, sir! He has been insufferable, Thomas, utterly insufferable.”

The musicians banged on their pots and drums, even as Ivola was ushered out into the light of the day, nonplussed. With a flourish, Skyla unwrapped… yes, the Stick II, with a bunch of flowers and seashells dangling from its end on twine and ribbons.

“I wanted to paint it,” Skyla said awkwardly, “but then I remembered that you do not like paint.” Which was why she was the worst daughter, she had once confessed.

Ivola glared around herself, suspecting a piratical joke.

“This is not my abdication, you understand,” Miss van Slembrouck went on. “My people have no taboos against competing with somebody you… do not dislike as much as you thought.” She thrust out the stick decisively.

“Did _you_ do this?” Thomas nudged Miranda, amazed. “I was at my wits’ end!”

The women’s hands met over their Stick of Discord, and almost before Ivola jerked down her head, some madman sounding suspiciously like Thomas himself started a wave of cheers.

“Did I matchmake for a pair of heathen girls I have known for less than a day?” Miranda paused, all innocence. “Shall we say, my skills aren’t as rusty as I imagined.”

Ivola lifted Skyla off the ground, the Stick II having been temporarily relegated to a mere afterthought. Very temporarily.

Thomas elbowed James. “You see?”

“Oh, you are the ultimate authority on crews now, are you?”

“Finally he catches up.”

“Well, this came out of nowhere,” Halsey complained with a yawn. “You turn your back on your Quartermaster for a moment, and love is in the air. Monkey business, that’s what it is.” He trailed off, staring between Thomas and his beloved exiles.

“Is it the turban? Anyhow, Halsey, friend, these are my James and Miranda. My James and Miranda, this is Halsey, also known as Avery’s ghost. Without him, I would be twice as mad and not half as piggish.”

Captain Glorious Beard swore. “Well, I’ll be damned! They’re real, after all!” Thomas blinked. “Sorry, mate, I just thought they were, you know, like the fellow with the fiddle.”

Thomas’s bowl fell on the sand. “Repeat that again, please?”

Halsey swallowed nervously, James and Miranda closing their ranks around Thomas - Miranda’s arm around Thomas’s shoulders, and James’s hand on his knife.

Skipping a beat, Halsey stuttered out: “The F-fiddler, the one you kept talking to before, um, James. Is that Miss Guthrie over there? God help me, I really must go!”

Thomas… doubted that Halsey, of all people, would play such a cruel trick on him. But none of his trials and tribulations had prepared him for _this_ blow.

How could Thomas the Fiddler _not_ be real? Elizabeth Ramsden had seen him and talked to him… hadn’t she? Thomas had paid the double fee! The Leighs had...

Had the Fiddler ever communicated with anyone but him?

Who else had never existed outside Thomas’s head? Halsey himself? Was Thomas still dying from fever on Mama Corra’s mat, provided that there even _was_ such a woman on Madagascar. He was so full of pride and foolish hopes and plans again, but how could he _ever_ be certain of anything?

Miranda called out his name, cupping his face in her hands. “Thomas, please, listen to my voice. Stay with me.”

The world was so strange around him, too bright and too much like one of those exotic fruits, one hard shell cracking only to reveal another.

“So he’s an actual lunatic, then?” he heard someone ask. “I thought it was all an act.”

“Do go away, you horrible girl! James, how _could_ you forget the Blanket?”

“He said he didn’t need it!”

“And you believed him?”

Thomas’s mind latched onto the Key Ring. Bess had to get the right key, or they would never move the pepper in time.

Suddenly, a heavy, furry body dropped on his lap, gazing up at him with round, wisened eyes.

“He likes ‘em,” a fourth voice said. “They calm ‘im down.”

“I have never seen one of you before,” he told the monkey in a very reasonable tone. “So I couldn’t possibly have imagined you.”

Mr. North-or-Mrs. West began grooming his-or-her beautiful self. Gingerly, Thomas looked up. He had never met a woman who dressed quite like Eleanor, nor anybody with Anne’s vivid hair. He had loved James’s beard, so he wouldn’t have given him a moustache. Miranda should never have looked half so careworn.

“Oh, I’m real,” Halsey assured him. “But see this black eye? I wish you’d made it up!”

Miranda kept holding Thomas protectively. “Would you like to go back to the house now?”

“No... I want to stay here.”

His stubbornness was repaid with a tent. Looking out through the flap, he could keep a weather eye out for James, who was, hopefully, not getting into any more fights and merely settling his business, with a little help from Mr. North and Mrs. West.

“He shall be back in a moment.” Miranda petted Thomas’s turban. “Now, tell me more about your monkeys.”

“They will soon completely take over Miss Guthrie’s tavern, I fear! Who will sail with us then?” They had trailed after her as she strode off, as if she were a monkey charmer. “The Dutch have this saying, ' _je bent in de aap gelogeerd_ ', which means something like 'you've been staying at the Monkey'. I shan’t be vulgar, so instead, I’ll relate to you its supposed origin story. Skyla once told me about an inn Amsterdam under that name, right next to the harbour. So when the sailors are too drunk to return to their ships, they would be stashed in the attic, with the live monkeys. Do you think Miss Guthrie would rename her establishment?”

“Oh, Thomas… you should coin a new saying, ‘staying with the Pigs’...”

 

* * *

 

James’s definition of a moment would only hold water with Thomas himself, but he wasn’t in the mind to bring that to James’s attention. Instead, he reached into his pocket… and remembered that, all thanks to James, he had donned the wrong coat.

He sat up anxiously. “Have you got a piece of rope on you? Or perhaps thick twine? _Don’t_ steal any from the new Stick.”

James was nothing if not resourceful under extreme pressure.

“This is another Dutch custom,” Thomas explained, stretching out the rope between his hands. “You probably already know it.” James as a seaman and Miranda as a connoisseur of jewelry. “True lovers’ knot.” Skyla wore one around her neck. “And I have figured out how to tie it for three.”

He intertwined the rope so that it had three petal-like loops and four knots forming a square in the middle.

“He goes to sea,” James said upon a closer inspection, “and he learns _this_ knot.”

“You couldn't even tie a neckcloth properly in London!” Miranda echoed.

“I blame London.” He paused, glancing at her with some uncertainty.

She nodded: yes, this was still the right James. Thomas smiled and reached out for his loves.

Far from abating, their recent lack of coordination multiplied. Thomas had never seen MIranda like this, so hesitant to do as she pleased. He was well aware that his and James’s passion for each other did not always leave the door open for her. But the notion of her forever staying outside, out of some misguided self-denial and castigation was not to be borne.

“Miranda.” He stroked her hair. “You deserve the world.” He had not told her that enough. “But  in the meanwhile, you must have us, or I shall be very angry with our entire trio.”

Miranda laughed, kissing his forehead. “And what have you to say for yourself, James?”

James paused with his hands under Thomas’s shirt, like a boy caught raiding the kitchen. “We wouldn’t be us without you.” His smile was almost bashful. “But if you’d rather sail to the Wrong Indies to marry a Malagasy king…”

Miranda looked at him and Thomas, as an item at first, noting the loaned ring, and then individually. Thomas beckoned her again.

“Oh, very well,” she conceded, straddling Thomas’s lap. “But if you’d met any handsome kings, you should’ve brought me one.”

 

* * *

 

“We used to play a game,” he murmured, his head resting on Miranda’s shoulder. “Name the Thomas.”

“He was real to you, darling. That’s more life than most people are allowed to have.”

Miranda had always been ridiculously biased too.

She nudged him to lie on his side, his back snug against James’s chest, their fingers interlacing over his hip. He could have done with a mattress, but that was soon forgotten, what with his loves taking charge. It was all that he had ever wanted - that, and a better world besides.

“You said I could fight for a nobler purpose,” James whispered. “What did you _think_ I was fighting for?”

“For the sake of fighting?” Thomas and Miranda replied in unison.

As they rested, hiding from the afternoon heat in one another’s, Thomas’s mind merrily skipped along to _all_ the things they had to catch up on. All the wonderful things.

So he asked.

Miranda propped herself up on her elbow. “Yes, Thomas, after you were taken away from me, the _toys_ were absolutely my first concern.”

“You packed the bloody signet ring! I’d rather be remembered by a dildo!” James’s body began to shake behind him. “What? ‘tis true!”

Miranda buried her face against his neck, giggling helplessly. “Of course it is.”

 

* * *

 

While some found their pockets of peace and terrible legacies, Riot and Disorder continued their reign over the town. The crews were less concerned with the intimate details of what Captain Flint did in his beach tent and more with who owed whom an eye.

“Billy tells me you haven’t burnt down Bedlam on your way out,” said Mr. Gates, whom Thomas had finally met on a more official basis.

Billy making friends among James’s men was either a good or a very bad sign, no middle ground. “It wasn’t very flammable, I’m afraid, the straw aside.”

“Do you know what the pirate law says about the boy who cried wolf, Mr. Goodhope?”

Ah, the false fire alarm. Thomas studied Mr. Gates uncertainly. “Nothing good, I should hope?”

Mr. Gates cracked a smile. “Some of those poor buggers believe it was a _prophecy_.”

“Oh dear me, is there no end to our mystical powers?”

“They have actually _volunteered_ to keep watch.”

Amazing. Except, the next logical step - the pirate logic being what it was - would be to set fire to everyone else’s ships, ‘preemptive-like’.

He shook Mr. Gates’s hand, saying that he had an idea how to sort it out. “I must ask, though… was the ship named after you?”

To quote the immortal classics, Minerva assumed the form and voice of Mentor, and presently made a covenant of peace between the three contending parties. It was put to their captains that they must kiss and be friends.

“Not I!” Halsey positively _glowed_ with outrage. “That sweaty, unkempt sword-clanger has disrespected me and my ship, and your James is a walking nightmare, that’s what he is!”

“Me,” repeated James, slowly. “Shaking hands with Vane.”

“No fucking way,” was Vane’s reaction.

Afterwards, James couldn’t fathom what it was that Thomas had whispered in Charles’s ear to make him reconsider.

“Why, I told him what had happened to the _Pigs II_. Nobody else can figure it out, as far as I can tell. He is very pleased.”

“‘ _Two_ ’?” James stared hard at Thomas’s ship in the distance and then back at him. “What happened to the first one and what number are you presently on?”

The silence was broken only by Halsey and his futile quest to rescue the monkeys from Eleanor.

It was such an Er Moment.

 

* * *

 

“That your man?” Ivola asked later, having somewhat recovered from the Stick’s inauguration. “Do I whack him for you?”

“Not at the moment, but I’ll have it in mind.”

She grinned. “We have not lose the fight.”

No, only some teeth and some money. “We are real pirates, are we not?” Say what James would.

“Mosiah say we’re children playing with fire.” She huffed. “Wise old men the same on every island!”

“... who is Mosiah?”

 

* * *

 

Billy had just finished loading Miranda’s cart with provisions. “That’s nearly everything, ma’am,” he said politely.

“Have you adopted him yet?” she whispered. “Please say you have adopted him - he can _memorise_ a shopping list!”

“Don’t let’s rush into anything,” answered the Thomas Who Had Rushed Off To The Wrong Indies.

“Isn’t he a bit... old?” James cut in.

Thomas and Miranda looked at James. Miranda told him: “Age is a state of mind, my dear.”

As evidenced by the three of them having their second schooling age.

 

* * *

 

When you are having a nightmare, you cannot ask ‘why?’ or ‘why now?’. A fearful mind does not always lend itself to a swift awakening - sometimes, it drags you in deeper and deeper still.

Thomas struggled with his chains, his strength fast leaving his body. When he finally broke the surface, it felt more like the water rejecting him than any victory of his. A ship’s rope was waiting for him at the end.

“ _You_ ,” he breathed out, collapsing at the railing after a long, wearisome climb. “What are _you_ doing here?” This man, he should have left behind oceans ago.

“I have always been here, boy,” was the dismissive reply. “You cannot deny me without denying yourself.”

Oh God.

“You chose them,” the Earl continued. “The Babylonian whore and the Irish sodomite. What does that say about you and your so-called high ideals, you guttersnipe?”

“I chose them a long time ago,” he muttered, pulling himself up to his feet. The ship was heaving violently, her decks running red with blood. “And there is nothing, _nothing_ you can do to change that!”

“I suppose you’ll like sharing a cauldron in Hell with them, then.”

“One might argue,” Thomas countered coolly, “that it was all an elaborate suicide on your part. And may God have mercy on your soul, because I-”

The fog parted and James strode out, wisps of it clinging to his blue coat. “Is he, this miserable shadow, what makes you a good man, Thomas?” Alfred shrank away from Lieutenant McGraw, growing paler and paler. “Is it being his antithesis? Or seeking his forgiveness? Showing _him_ the light?”

No. _No_. “Anger,” Thomas answered. “Anger is what makes me who I am. He may have been the source of it once, but it does not belong to him. My anger and love are mine and mine alone.”

The irons relinquished their hold on Thomas’s wrists, sinking back into the water.

“Oh, thank you,” he breathed out, embracing James giddily. “Thank you, thank you so much for guiding me home!”

McGraw patted his back. “This is not a goodbye.” He smiled, pulling away. “I will always be here for when you need me, Thomas. And,” he glanced back, “I will watch over the darkness.”

Thomas opened his eyes with the song of fiddle still ringing in his ears, nestled between James and Miranda.

He was home, at last.

Ready for the good work to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've completely lost track of pistols; James and Miranda own two horses; Randall is still a bosun; Mosiah is already the elder of his faction. The Bahamian fruits are all from Google, most likely in season, but I didn't double check. The word 'pernickety' might not have been imported from Scottish yet, but it's perfect. And yes, Halsey has just quoted an internet meme.
> 
> I'll be adding an epilogue and some bloopers/extras shortly :) This has been a mad journey for me too!!!


	9. Epilogue: But What of the Spaniard?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse of things to come...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were many, _many_ possible epilogues to the story, but this one practically wrote itself.

**_Five years later_ **

 

“ _Thoma’_?” The alcove curtain was drawn aside to reveal a beautiful young woman in a gauzy light blue dress flattering her golden complexion, tied at the waist with a sash just so, her rich dark brown hair tumbling over her shoulder in a perfectly sculpted cascade “ _Nous avons un problème_.”

He turned a page in his book, replying in the same language: “ _A problem Ivola and her Stick cannot solve_?”

“ _A problem with a Spaniard,_ _mon habitant de la lune_.” He frowned, trying to guess if she meant a crew member, a resident or a spy, and she added: “ _Nuestro amigo común, el_ _esquivo Sr. Vazquez_.”

“Oh, _that_ Spaniard.” Good grief, not again! He continued in French again: “The utter fiend! What has he done this time, pray tell?”

“He has led a young man into temptation, but not in a pleasant way.”

Well, now, he thought, I’d better deal with this promptly. “I must admit, of all eventualities, this one surprises me the most.”

Max’s smile was altogether _too_ smug. “Why?”

“Because when James sets his mind on pursuit of something, either he finds it, or it never existed at all.” Admittedly, it could turn out to be a Jesuit’s journal instead of a book on gardening. _But it has a whole page on plants, Miranda!_ “This is not like him, but it certainly accounts for his absence.”

Max’s hand slid down the bannister. “He is at Eleanor’s office right now.”

“Lovely, let us see if we can surprise them yet.”

The culprit in question was waiting beside the young mango tree in what they called the parlour. One might mistake him for Max’s cousin, though she swore that she had never laid eyes on him before in her life. At the hour, most of the girls were idle, which meant that the scene about to unfold had an audience. A kitten-sized black-and-white pup swung from one of the delicate branches by her sister’s tail, also watching them.

“Those are… curious monkeys?” the culprit ventured with an eager smile, from a perceived safe distance.

“They don’t bite,” replied Idelle. “But they _are_ awfully loud.”

“Is that a problem in a brothel?”

“The Big Office, I should say,” Thomas murmured to Max. In a louder tone, he said: “Mr. Silver, I presume? I hear you have a complaint to make, and I do not think it is about the monkeys.”

Little Paris had various rooms for receiving the visitors who were here for business before pleasure. The Big Office was the one that conveyed a certain impression of gravity.

Mr. Silver had found himself in possession of a page that might or might not have been torn out of the log which James had been hunting for all these months. And it was a truth universally acknowledged that spoils of plunder must necessarily be fenced.

All these months, and suddenly it was more than a story that James told whenever Vane or Hornigold got on his nerves or the prize had not met the expectations. Mr. Silver did not hand the page over, holding onto it like his entire future was written on it.

“When you plant a mango seed,” Thomas said, “you have to wait five to eight years for it to bear the first fruit.” It would probably taste the same as that of its Indian parent, but that remained to be seen. Mr. Silver frowned in puzzlement. “When you steal even a little thing from strangers, you cannot predict the ripples that your action will create.”

The thief shrugged. “What can I say? I tend to focus on what’s right in front of me, especially if it’s material gain.”

“So I understand.” Thomas cut down to the chase: “How much?”

The young man hesitated, reassessing his surroundings. “Five… thousand.”

Max laughed, as if she would charge any less.

“How quaint you are,” was Thomas’s reply. “Five hundred at most.” In coins or gems, it would not just set him up for life, it would make him reasonably well-to-do, provided that he were thrifty with his expenses.

“Four thousand, and I’ll tell you how it came to be in my hands.”

Max sipped her tea daintily.

“One thousand, and I shall _not_ tell a soul.”

Mr. Silver paused. “Deal.” As Max stepped out of the room to get the gems, he asked: “How much is it actually worth?”

“That depends. To me? It is worth some amusement. To Captain Flint? Well, the word is, he is hoping to make millions off it.” The young man’s curls drooped at once. “But on the other hand, the punishment for keeping it from your crew is death by marooning.”

“I’ll take the money, please!”

Max deposited the pouch on the desk. As the thief reached for it, Thomas intercepted him. Neither of them had hands that spoke of long sea voyages, Thomas’s two wedding bands gleaming copper and gold on his finger and Mr. Silver wearing no rings, nor showing any suggestion of having ever worn them.

Thomas said, “Not so fast. There will be conditions to our transaction. First, a mark will be placed on your person.” The young man stared at him. “You shall be identified by a sketch and the measurements of your head and both of your hands. Second, you will never set foot in Nassau again, or there _will_ be a reckoning.”

“But-!”

“You _have_ stolen from one of our own,” Thomas cut him off sharply. “Consider yourself lucky to leave with your life and something of more value.”

Mr. Silver cringed. “Five hundred, and no mark?”

“Do I sound like I’m still haggling with you?”

The thief flashed an almost hurt look at Max, who pursed her lips as if to say: ‘What can you do?’

The thief’s eyes darted back to Thomas: “ _Please_ , there is no need for such drastic measures! I did not _mean_ to steal it, it just… fell into my hands! Surely there must be a way out of this without any black spots _or_ violence.”

Thomas… would no doubt regret it later. “Alternatively, you may exchange the page for a chance to redeem yourself. A chance to return to your crew with a clean slate and earn your share by doing your goddamn job.”

“Oh, thank you!” Mr. Silver’s eyes narrowed. “But… _you_ will know.” He glanced between them again. “You and Max.”

“Yes, well, consider it a reasonable precaution.”

Watching him leave, Thomas had a thought that the young man might not even survive the cruise, unaccustomed to piracy as he was. But Thomas would honour his part of the bargain, and if he did survive, perhaps he would make a good use of his second chance.

Max poured Thomas more tea. “You really think this is a good idea?”

It could hardly be worse than any of James’s.

“You have Mr. Gates, Billy, Ivola’s people... Two crews trust and respect you without question or complaint. You do not need another spy, nor would this man be a good choice.”

They could argue semantics, or he could simply say: “There are things a _friend_ would not tell you. Especially if you are a known madman.”

Max rolled her eyes. “He will remember this.” She leaned into Thomas, speaking urgently. “He will remember what you did and what you know about him. Remember the day you denied him his easy way out.”

Thomas folded his arms across his chest, getting up to look out of the window. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much, _mon amie_. I, too, have a good memory.”

The sun sifted through the town, scattering trails of sparkles over the blue sea. But the clouds were already gathering over the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby lemurs are [hella cute](https://lemurconservationfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/l-catta-moose-and-duffy-2.jpg) (imagine the right colouring). 
> 
> The tree is young and fits into the open roof parlour, but Miranda keeps imagining it eventually shooting up :D Thomas always says that by that time, they'd have built smth else.
> 
> “Nous avons un problème.” = "We have a problem." (hopefully, I had to rely on Google for this)
> 
> "mon habitant de la lune" = "my moondweller" (probably sounds clumsy, so it's a bit of a placeholder)
> 
> “Nuestro amigo común, el esquivo Sr. Vazquez.” = "Our common friend, the elusive Sr. Vasquez."
> 
> In general, when Thomas and Max are alone, they usually speak French or Spanish bc she must Practice. Now, in canon, I'm Camp Silver & Max rule Nassau while James retires to his teacups, but Max getting adopted by Thomas within three seconds of landing in Nassau? Tell me she doesn't grow up into the smuggest Princess Smugness she should be. As to how Thomas acquires the place and what the Rapist Canoes as a tribe have to say about it, that's for the future :)


	10. Extras

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some stuff I've accumulated while writing this thing :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A List of Things Thomas Learns/Rediscovers Along the Way (courtesy of DreamingPagan):
> 
> 1a. Authors can and will be driven up the wall  
> 1b. Do not board the wrong ship  
> 1c. Do not ever let James find _the_ writings  
>  2\. Decent boots are important  
> 3\. Blankets solve everything  
> 3a. What blankets can't solve, the stowaway monkeys can  
> 4\. Do not disrespect the Stick  
> 5\. It is absolutely okay to yell that you love a man at complete strangers - if they react wrong, they're the crazy ones  
> 6\. James's fashion sense is unbeatable  
> 7\. Miranda is the best  
> (from [Iciel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lciel):)  
> 8\. Coats maketh pyrates.  
> 9\. Fortune is allocated randomly amongst pirates. So is hair.  
> 10\. Repurchase toys for Miranda's birthdays, including missed ones.  
> (from DreamingPagan:)  
> 11\. The above spelling of the word pirates makes James twitch a little. It's funny.  
> 12\. Halsey insists that the above spelling of the word pirates is the ONLY one for him and James is doing it wrong again.  
> (from Dr_Doomsduck:)  
> 3\. Watermelons are public property. especially if said public spies on your wife.  
> 14.Charles Vane and James Flint need to be kept apart, unless the situation requires immediate chaos and brawling.  
> 15\. Anne may not be the queen of England, but she is the queen of hats  
> 16\. Jack Rackham does not have an official job in his crew, so I don't need one either  
> 17.a monkeys are remarkably effective therapy dogs  
> 17.b monkeys are definitely not dogs, do not try to leash them, it will only end in tears.  
> 18\. Eleanor does not appreciate vandalism towards her property  
> 19 Eleanor believes the whole of Nassau to be her property.  
> 20 Eleanor believes the monkeys are also her property.  
> 21\. The monkeys believe Eleanor to be theirs.  
> 22\. Miranda does not appreciate the following:  
> \- burning the laundry  
> \- almost accidental throatcutting while shaving  
> \- Jokes about my almost accidental throatcutting  
> \- spilling oil on the bedsheets  
> \- spilling oil on the kitchentable  
> \- spilling oil on the veranda  
> \- spilling oil in the garden.  
> 23\. Miranda does appreciate the following:  
> \- affection of nearly any kind  
> \- books that are actually about gardening  
> \- proper memorization of shopping lists  
> -monkeys. no really, she does  
> \- The signet ring, apparently  
> \- James  
> 24\. ...(fill in yours)

**BLOOPERS**

 

THOMAS: [ _looking at the camera like he's on the Office_ ] I disown my father in the _previous_ story and _he is in the actual opening scene of this_? That's it, I'm out of here!

 

* * *

 

MR. LEIGH: Will you tell him or should I?

MRS. LEIGH: Hush, you! He is the only tutor who hasn't run away to the tigers yet! So what if he has a bit of an imaginary friend problem? You imagine you have friends all the time!

 

* * *

 

HALSEY: _Thomas_ as a cook? Hahaha. Ha. Ye gods.

 

* * *

 

MAMA CORRA: You must watch over this strange white man.

 

IVOLA: Why would I want to do that?

 

MAMA CORRA: Remember that suspicious Dutch boy I said I'd turn into a pig if he ever so much as looked in your direction again?

 

IVOLA: What boy?

 

MAMA CORRA: Exactly.

 

* * *

 

MIRANDA: You cannot go into the house!

 

JAMES: Why the fuck not?

 

MIRANDA: [ _thinking frantically_ ] We would have to confront almost five year's worth of pain and grief and bottled up feelings! And then get impromptu express therapy!

 

JAMES: [ _leaps onto his horse_ ]

 

THOMAS: Miranda? Hmm, where did she go?

 

* * *

 

THOMAS: [ _by some miracle, arrives to Miranda's house without anyone's help_ ] [ _clears his throat_ ] [ _Kate Bush playing in the background_ ]

 

Miranda, it's me, your Thomas.  
I've come home. I'm so cold!  
Let me in-a-your window.

 

* * *

 

THOMAS: [ _arriving to the tavern mid-bar fight_ ]

 

I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you  
I know you were right, believing for so long  
I'm all out of love, what am I without you  
I can't be too late to say that I was so wrong

 

* * *

 

THOMAS: Take it from me, this town’s two greatest failings are the lack of proper sanitation and the criminal absence of a good leg of mutton.

 

JACK: [ _appearing out of nowhere_ ] Might you have a moment to talk about the appaling state of Nassau's privies?

 

CUT TO:

 

THOMAS and JACK founding Nassau's first Privy Council, its motto being A Blanket For All, A Real Musician For Every Privy.

 

* * *

 

THOMAS: [asks about the current status of their sex toy collection]

 

MIRANDA: Well, I did take _one_ , but when I tried to call it 'Thomas', James got very confused and emotional and wouldn't talk to me for months.

 

* * *

 

THOMAS: But since you have brought up Vane, if he is what you say he is, why has he stayed instead of leaving with Teach? Why not be where all the fiends are?

 

JAMES: Eleanor.

 

THOMAS: Really? We're suddenly undorsing such obviously unhealthy relationships?

 

JAMES: No, you misunderstand. 'Eleanor' was an expletive. The real answer is 'Me'.

 

THOMAS: ... I knew it.

 

JAMES: I MEANT OUR RIVALRY, THOMAS!

 

* * *

 

HALSEY: NOT I! HE SAID BLACKBEARD HAD A BEARD TO END ALL PIRATE BEARDS!

 

* * *

 

JAMES: Why the fuck are we suddenly adopting Billy?

 

THOMAS: He doesn't turn into a you-hater or an alcoholic, everybody wins.

 

JAMES: But my war...

 

MIRANDA: [ _pets him_ ] You can still punch England in the face, darling.

 

* * *

 

NAFT: Beard, beard. Face, face, Pistol, pistol. Charles, Charles.

 

BLACKBEARD: ...

 

HALSEY: ...

 

VANE: The fuck?

 

* * *

 

**Q &A**

 

**Was the Fiddler plot twist planned from the start?  
**

 

It came to me when writing one of the early chapters, but this is a normal writerly thing :) **  
**

 

**Why doesn’t Billy go home to his parents?**

 

He is not a murderer and he has hardly been a pirate as of 1710, but he still hates the Navy and he wishes to weaken it.

 

He will write to them, though. One day.

 

**What of Mr. Scott?**

 

When something goes _this_ weird, his first reaction is to withdraw deeper into the shadows until people forget about him. Hopefully, in five years, Nassau will be ready for an open alliance.

 

**Peter the Would-be Soap?**

 

When the time is right, Thomas will absolutely haunt the fuck out of him and maybe even scare him into pitching their agenda in Whitehall with better results :)

 

**Pastor Lambrick?**

 

Miranda is frying her popcorn. Lambrick is either originally from colonies like Boston or the Carolinas or from London (bc he says to Vane he's done this before, there haven't been any hangings in Nassau for a while and he's not that old), and he may just arrive ca. 1710 too.

 

**Richard Guthrie?**

 

He will cause some problems, especially after he recognises Thomas & Miranda, but they have some time before that happens.

 

**The Navy & England?**

 

James punches them.

 

**Why is this story so Charles Vane-friendly?**

  
Thomas's list of irredeemable people (as people, not institutions):

\-- Alfred the Douche Canoe;

\-- slavers he's seen on St. Mary's;

\-- Navy captains like Billy's;

\-- sadistic pirates like Low's gang or Hammunds...

 

If Charles puts himself on that list, he will definitely be sorry. If not, he's in for a longer and crazier life.

 

**Does Jack build any Crack Tents here?**

 

YES! All of the tents! The Complaint Tent, The Confused Tent, The Get Along Tent (this one gets burnt down a lot; eventually, Thomas clues in that the warring parties are in fact in cahoots to burn it down never to have to get along and is pleased bc teamwork) and of course the Thomas-Free-Zone Tent, in which you can be an asshole without worrying about disappointing Thomas.

 

**Does Thomas ever live down the Wrong Indies and the dildo?**

 

Nope.

 

* * *

 

**Misc.**

 

I have no specific casts for Ivola or Skyla in mind. Ivola is built like a young Serena Williams. Skyla may look smth like <a href="http://31pictures.photoshelter.com/image/I00004lrvY5yIlZo"> this </a>, but with black hair. They are absolutely bulletproof.

 

Max acquires a harem of beautiful Women At Large bringing her gold. All is well in the world.

 

The main challenge of dating Eleanor is that her one true love are two very loud monkeys.

 

Miranda & Halsey go on a shopping trip to Boston. She buys everything, but they have to leave in a hurry.

 

Halsey's stories of the Indian treasures eventually drive Charles to sail there and capture a prize to shut James up for good. Halsey and Charles sail in consort, get the gold, wreck the ship and steal a slaver merchantman under the name _Delicia_. Mama Corra gets her hands on a scarred and disgruntled Bristolian with a funny wood-themed name left behind. The ship theft was Jack's idea.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "Thomas the Mariner" by shirogiku](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875132) by [RunawayMarbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles)




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